with, danced along in a canter until the West Gate of Paris was
reached, after which, and being now sure that its exuberance was
useless, it settled down into a long, easy stride, and bore its rider
as smoothly as a carriage might toward his goal.

The moon, which a few nights back had shown beneath its young rays the
corpse hanging on the gibbet outside the city of Troyes, lit up now
the road along which he passed, disturbing on his way sometimes a deer
in a thicket, sometimes a scurrying rabbit--they disturbing, too, the
fiery creature he bestrode, and frightening it into a swifter pace.
Still, each moment brought him nearer to his destination, to the
arbiter in whose hands his destiny was held; and, for the rest, he sat
like a rock upon its back. Its gambades could not unseat him.

So the twelve English miles were nearly passed; he was on the new road
that branched off to Marly--the strangest route that any man living in
those days ever, perhaps, rode along. On either side it was bordered
by small forests of enormous trees, mostly covered with dead branches,
since these trees had died unnaturally long months ago, when
transported from Compiegne to where they now stood. Also he saw
beneath the moon's gleams fountains from which no water could be
forced to flow--great basins to which water could not be brought, or
only brought by depriving Versailles of its natural supply. Louis had
thought that he could force Nature--uproot trees from one spot, where
they had flourished for a hundred years and cause them to flourish
equally well in another; had imagined that even the waters on which
his gondolas, brought from Venice, might float, could be forced into
existence at his command. It was a monstrous impertinence offered to
Nature, and it cost him four million and a half of livres, with but
little profit to any but the frogs and toads.

There rose now before his eyes--where the road branched off in
different directions, on the right to Versailles, and, a little to the
left, to Marly--the white-washed walls of an auberge known as _Le Bon
Pasteur_, a place soon to be pulled down, since Louis had bought out
the owner, and was about to build a pavilion upon it. But it stood up
to this time untouched, as it had done since the days of Henri
III--long, low, thatched, and weather-beaten, three old poplar trees
in front of it, a mounting-block also, and, of course, the usual heap
of filth by its side where the stables were.

App