"You deserted?"
"Not quite that," was the reply. "I took leave, and, as I had seen enough of the black hole already, I took good care to give the provost-marshal no notice on the subject. A fortnight's march brought me within sight of the towers of Notre-Dame. But as I was resting myself on the roadside, our adjutant, as ill luck would have it, came by in the coupe of the diligence. He jumped out. I was seized, given up to the next guard-house, and after fitting me with a pair of fetters, by way of boots, I was ordered to take my passage with a condemned regiment for the West Indies. There I served ten years; I saw the regiment reduced to a skeleton by short rations and new rum; and returned the tenth representative of fifteen hundred felons. At last I have a chance; the gendarme of the village was so desperately mauled by the foresters in the attempt to carry you prisoner, that he has been forced to take to his bed, and let me take his place. The thing is certain now. You will be guillotined, but I shall see Paris."
Yet what is certain in this most changeful of possible worlds?
"Fate granted half the prayer,
The rest the gods dispersed in empty air."
We had toiled through our long journey, rendered doubly long by the dreariest and deepest roads on earth, and were winding round the spur of Montmartre, when a troop of citizen heroes, coming forth to sweep the country of the retreating Prussians, and whose courage had risen to the boiling point by the news of the retreat, surrounded the carriage. My Prussian uniform was proof enough for the brains of the patriots; and the quick discovery of Parisian ears, that I had not learned my French in their capital, settled the question of my being a traitor. The gendarme joined in the charge with his natural volubility; but rather insisted rashly on his right to take his prisoner into Paris on his own behalf. I saw a cloud gathering on the brow of the chef, a short, stout, and grim-looking fellow, with the true Faubourg St Antoine physiognomy. The prize was evidently too valuable not to be turned to good account with the authorities; and he resolved on returning at the head of his brother patriots to present me as the first-fruits of his martial career. The dispute grew hot; my escort was foolish enough to clap his hand on the hilt of his sabre—an affront intolerable to a citizen, at the head of fifty or sixty braves from the counter or the shambles; the result was, a succession of blows from the whole troop, which closed in my seeing him stripped of every thing, and flung into the cachot of the corps de garde, from which his only view of his beloved Paris must have been through an iron grille.
My captor, determined to enter the capital for once with eclat, seated himself beside me in the chaise de poste, and, surrounded by his pike-bearers, we began our march down the descent of the hill.
My new friend was communicative. He gave his history in a breath. He had been a clerk in the office of one of the small tribunals in the south; inflamed with patriotism, and indignant at the idea of selling his talents at the rate of ten sous a-day, "in a rat-hole called a bureau," he had resolved on being known in the world, and to Paris he came. Paris was the true place for talent. His civisme had become conspicuous; he had "assisted" at the birth of liberty. He had carried a musket on the 10th of August, and had "been appointed by the Republic to the command of the civic force," which now moved, before and behind me. He was a "grand homme" already. Danton had told him so within the last fortnight, and France and Europe would no sooner read his last pamphlet on the "Crimes of Kings," than his fame would be fixed with posterity.
I believe that few men have passed through life without experiencing times when it would cost them little to lay it down. At least such times have occurred to me, and this was among them. Yet this feeling, whether it is to be called nonchalance or despair, has its advantages for the moment; it renders the individual considerably careless of the worst that man can do to him; and I began to question my oratorical judge's clerk on the events in the "city of cities." No man could take fuller advantage of having a listener at his command.
"We have cut down the throne," said he, clapping his hands with exultation, "and now you may buy it for firewood. But you are an aristocrat, and of course a slave; while we have got liberty, equality, and a triumvirate that shears off the heads of traitors at a sign. Suspicion of being suspected is quite sufficient. Away goes the culprit; a true patriot is ordered to take possession of his house until the national pleasure is known; and thus every thing goes on well. Of course, you have heard of the clearance of the prisons. A magnificent work. Five thousand aristocrats, rich, noble, and enemies to their country, sent headless to the shades of tyrants. Vive la Republique! But a grand idea strikes me. You shall see Danton himself, the genius of liberty, the hero of human nature, the terror of kings." The thought was new, and a new thought is enough to turn the brain of the Gaul at any time. He thrust his head out of the window, ordered a general halt; and, instead of taking me to the quarters of the National, resolved to have the merit of delivering up an "agent of Pitt and English guineas" to the master of the Republic alone. "A l'Abbaye!" was his cry. But a new obstacle now arose in his troop; they had reckoned on a civic supper with their comrades of the guard; and the notion of bivouacking in front of the Abbaye, under the chilling wind and fierce showers which now swept down the dismal streets, was too much for their sense of discipline. The dispute grew angry. At length one of them, a huge and savage-looking fellow, who, by way of illustration, thrust his pike close to the little commandant's shrinking visage, bellowed out—