lled down to Blaye, and therefore no
sooner were my feet once more on the soil of my beloved France, than I
turned them towards Libourne, or rather Fronsac, and the morning after
my arrival there, started for the capital.

But so desperately were the joints of travel dislocated (the war having
deplenished the country alike of cattle and able-bodied drivers), and so
frequent were the breakdowns by the way, that I might as expeditiously
have trudged it. It cost me fifteen good days to reach Orleans, and at
Etampes (which I reached on the morning of the 30th) the driver of the
tottering diligence flatly declined to proceed. The Cossacks and
Prussians were at the gates of Paris. "Last night we could see the fires
of their bivouacs. If Monsieur listens he can hear the firing." The
Empress had fled from the Tuileries. "Whither?" The driver, the
aubergiste, the disinterested crowd, shrugged their shoulders. "To
Rambouillet, probably. God knew what was happening or what would
happen." The Emperor was at Troyes, or at Sens, or else as near as
Fontainebleau; nobody knew for certain which. But the fugitives from
Paris had been pouring in for days, and not a cart or four-footed beast
was to be hired for love or money, though I hunted Etampes for hours.

At length, and at nightfall, I ran against a bow-kneed grey mare, and a
_cabriolet de place_, which, by its label, belonged to Paris; the pair
wandering the street under what it would be flattery to call the
guidance of an eminently drunken driver. I boarded him; he dissolved at
once into maudlin tears and prolixity. It appeared that on the 29th he
had brought over a bourgeois family from the capital, and had spent the
last three days in perambulating Etampes, and the past three nights in
crapulous slumber within his vehicle. Here was my chance, and I demanded
to know if for a price he would drive me back with him to Paris. He
declared, still weeping, that he was fit for anything. "For my part, I
am ready to die, and Monsieur knows that we shall never reach."

"Still, anything is better than Etampes."

For some inscrutable reason this struck him as excessively comic. He
assured me that I was a brave fellow, and bade me jump up at once.
Within five minutes we were jolting towards Paris. Our progress was all
but inappreciable, for the grey mare had come to the end of her powers,
and her master's monologue kept pace with her. His anecdotes were all of
the past three days. The iron o