The sun had reached the horizon when they arrived within a short half-league of the town before them, and here she suddenly asked her conductor whether he intended to travel farther before morning. Florian, hoping to obtain some clue to her name and residence, replied that he was undetermined; on which she advised him to give a night’s rest to his jaded horse, and strongly recommended to him an hotel, the name and situation of which she minutely described. He promised to comply with her recommendations; and immediately, by a prompt and vigorous effort, she threw herself from the horse to the ground. Hastily arranging her disordered travelling-dress, she approached him, clasped his hand in both her own and thanked him, in brief but fervent terms, for the important service he had rendered her. “And now,” added she, in visible embarrassment, as she raised her hood, and looked fearfully around, “I have another favour to request. My father would not approve of your accompanying me home, nor must the town gossips see me at this hour with a young man and a stranger: you will, therefore, oblige me by resting your horse here for half an hour, that I may reach the town before you. Will you do me this favour?” she repeated, with a pleading look. “Most certainly I will,” replied the good-natured but disappointed Florian. “Farewell, then,” she cordially rejoined, “and may Heaven reward your kindness!”
Bounding forward with a light and rapid step, she soon disappeared round a sharp angle in the road, occasioned by a sudden bend of the adjacent river. Florian, dismounting to relieve his horse, gazed admiringly upon her elastic step and well-turned figure, until she was out of sight. He recollected, with a sigh of regret, the sprightly graces and artless intelligence of her conversation; again the sense of his desolate and perilous condition smote him; he felt himself more than ever forlorn and unhappy, and reproached himself for the helpless bashfulness which had prevented him from inquiring more urgently the name and residence of this charming stranger. While thus painfully musing, the time she had prescribed elapsed; and Florian, remounting, let the bridle fall upon the neck of the exhausted animal, which paced towards the town as deliberately as the unknown fair one could have wished. At a short distance from the town-gate the high-road passed under an archway, composing part of a detached house of Gothic and ancient structure; and on the town side of the arch was a toll-bar, at which a boy was stationed, who held out his hat to Florian, and demanded half a sous. “For what?” asked Florian.
“A long-established toll, sir,” said the boy; “and if you have a compassionate heart, you will give another half-sous to the condemned criminals,” he continued, as he pointed to an iron box, placed near the house door, under a figure of the Virgin. Shuddering at the words, Florian threw some copper coins into the box; and, as he hastened forward, endeavoured to banish the painful association of ideas, by fixing his thoughts upon the mysterious fair one. Suspecting, from the pressing manner in which she had recommended a particular hotel to his preference, that, if he went there, he might possibly see or hear from her in the morning, he proceeded to the Henri Quatre, which proved to be an hotel of third-rate importance, but well suited to his limited means, and recommending itself by an air of cleanliness and comfort. The evenings at this season were cool; and as it would have required some time to heat the parlour, the landlord proposed to him to sit down and take some refreshment in his well-warmed kitchen. Florian complied with this invitation, but not without some apprehension of the presence of strangers; and, stepping into the kitchen, was relieved by the discovery that it was occupied only by servants, who were too busily engaged in preparing supper to take notice of him.
Sitting down in a corner near the fire, the combined effects of a genial warmth and excessive fatigue threw him into a sound sleep, which lasted several hours, and would have continued much longer, had he not been roused by the landlord, who told him that his supper had been ready some time, but that he had been unwilling to disturb a slumber so profound. In fact, the repose of the unfortunate fugitive had not, during the five preceding nights, been so continuous and refreshing, so free from painful and menacing visions. Rising drowsily from his chair, he followed the landlord to a table where a roasted capon and a glass jug of bright wine waited his arrival. The servants had all retired for the night,—the landlord quitted the kitchen, and Florian, busily engaged in dissecting the fowl, thought himself the sole tenant of the spacious apartment, when, looking accidentally towards the fire, he saw with surprise that the chair he had just quitted was occupied. Looking more intently, he distinguished a short man of more than middle age, whose square and sturdy figure was partially concealed by a capacious mantle. His hair was grey, his forehead seamed with broad wrinkles, and his bushy brows beetled over a set of features stern and massive as if cast in iron. His eyes were small and deep-set, but of a lustrous black; and Florian observed with dismay that they were fixed upon his countenance with a look of searching scrutiny. It was near midnight, and in the deep silence which reigned through the house, this motionless attitude, and marble fixedness of look, gave to the stranger’s appearance a character so appalling, that, had he not broken the spell by stooping to light his pipe, the excited Florian would ere long have thought him an unearthly object. The stranger now quitted his seat by the fire, took from a table near him a jug of wine, and approached the wondering Florian. “With your leave, my good sir,” he began, “I will take a chair by your table. A little friendly gossip is the best of all seasoning to a glass of wine.”
Without waiting for a reply, the old man seated himself directly opposite to Florian, and again fixed a scrutinising gaze upon his countenance. The conscious fugitive, who felt a growing and unaccountable dread of this singular intruder, muttered a brief assent, and continued to eat his supper in silent but obvious embarrassment; stealing now and then a timid look at the stranger, but hastily withdrawing his furtive glances as he felt the beams of the old man’s small and vivid eyes penetrating his very soul. He observed that the features of his tormentor were cast in a vulgar mould, but his gaze was widely different from that of clownish curiosity, and there was in his deportment a stern and steady self-possession, which suggested to the alarmed Florian a suspicion that he was an agent of the police, who had probably tracked him through the cross-roads he had traversed in his flight from D. The rich colour of his cheeks turned to an ashy paleness at this appalling conjecture; and, leaving his supper unfinished, he rose abruptly from the table to quit the room, when the old man, starting suddenly from his chair, seized the shaking hand of Florian, and, looking cautiously around him, said in subdued but impressive tones—“It is not accident, young man, which brings us together at this hour. I came in while you were asleep, and begged the landlord would not awaken you, that I might say a few words to you in confidence, after the servants had gone to bed.”
“To me?” exclaimed Florian, in anxious wonder.
“Hush!” said the old man, again looking round the kitchen. “My object is to give you a friendly warning; for, if I am not for the first time mistaken in these matters, you are menaced with a formidable danger.”
“Danger?” repeated the pallid Florian, in a voice scarcely audible.
“And have you not good reason to expect this danger?” continued the stranger. “Your sudden paleness tells me that you know it. I am an old man, and my life has been a rough pilgrimage, but I have still a warm heart, and can make large allowances for the headlong impetuosities which too often plunge a young man into crime. You may safely trust one,” he continued, placing his hand upon his heart, “in whose bosom the confessions of many hapless fugitives repose, and will repose, so long as life beats in my pulses. I betray no man who confides in me, were he stained even with blood.”