e must ride for it, Gervois."

"It's all over, then?" said I.

"Yes, all over," said he while, pressing his horse to speed, he dashed
on in front of me; nor was I sorry that even so much of space separated
us at that moment.

Through that long, bright, starry night we rode at the top speed of our
horses, and, as day was breaking, entered Rostadt, where we ate a hasty
breakfast, and again set out. Ysaffich reported himself at each military
station as the bearer of despatches, till, on the second morning, we
arrived at Hellsheim, on the Bergstrasse, where we left our horses, and
proceeded on foot to the Rhine by a little pathway across the fields. We
crossed the river, and, hiring a wagon, drove on to Erz, a hamlet on the
Moselle, at which place we found horses again ready for us. I was
terribly fatigued by this time, but Ysaffich seemed fresh as when we
started. Seeing, however, my exhaustion, he proposed to halt for a
couple of hours,--a favor I gladly accepted. The interval over, we
remounted, and so on to Namur, where we arrived on the sixth day, having
scarcely interchanged as many words with each other from the moment of
our setting out.

CHAPTER XLVII. TOWARDS HOME

Ysaffich's retreat was a small cottage about two miles from Dinant, and
on the verge of the Ardennes forest. He had purchased it from a retired
"Garde Chasse" some years before, "seeing," as he said, "it was exactly
the kind of place a man may lie concealed in, whenever the time comes,
as it invariably does come, that one wants to escape from recognition."

I have already said that he was not very communicative as we went along;
but as we drew nigh to Dinant he told me in a few words the chief events
of his career since we had parted.

"I have made innumerable mistakes in life, Gervois, but my last was the
worst of all. I married! Yes, I persuaded your old acquaintance Madame
von Geysiger to accept me at last. She yielded, placed her millions
and tens of millions at my disposal, and three months after we were
beggared. Davoust found, or said he found, that I was a Russian spy;
swore that I was carrying on a secret correspondence with Sweden;
confiscated every sou we had in the world, and threw me into jail at
Lubeck, from which I managed to escape, and made my way to Paris. There
I preferred my claim against the marshal: at first before the _cour
militaire_, then to the minister, then to the Emperor. They all agreed
that Davoust was grossl