dies spoke French fluently, and I tolerably, we passed well enough for
what we were not.

But I disliked the whole business, still more when I heard from some of
the attendants in the hotel that this citizen Cazin was a man looked
askance upon by some of his own party, and reputed to be both greedy and
heartless.

If I could have had my own way, I would have tried that very night to
get them out of the city they had been at so much trouble to reach. But
they were worn-out with fatigue and anxiety, and were fain to lay their
heads anywhere. Before the night was out their baggage, rescued from
the overturned diligence, was brought to the hotel, labelled (as I could
not help noticing) with the name "Cazin," which only involved us all in
deeper complication and trouble.

Next day we waited for the promised visit from my ladies' travelling
companion, but he never came. And in the evening we discovered the
reason. The _maitre d'hotel_ demanded admission to their apartment and
announced, with a roughness very different from his civility of the
night before, that at the Convention that day several suspected persons
had been denounced, among others the citizen Cazin, for having been in
traitorous treaty with the enemies of the Republic. In a few hours it
would become known that he had travelled to Paris with two ladies, and
it was as much as his (my host's) neck was worth to allow those ladies
to remain another hour in his house. Indeed his duty was to inform the
authorities at once who his guests were.

Happily for us his hotel had been visited by the police only the night
before--ere the travellers arrived--and he had not yet exposed their
names on his list. But it was known that the baggage, delivered last
night, bore the name of the suspected Cazin, and that was enough to ruin
us all.

You may fancy the distress of the ladies at this news. All they could
do was to hand one of their little rolls of _assignats_ to the landlord,
and promise that within an hour he should be rid of them.

"But the baggage," said mine host, who, in the midst of his
perturbation, saw his way to a _solatium_ for himself; "I must detain
that, and hand it over if required."

"But it is not Monsieur Cazin's; it is my lady's, who is no connection
of the suspect," said I.

"If the ladies cannot part with their baggage," said mine host, fumbling
the notes, "they must remain here with it. I confiscate it in the name
of the Republic One a