ot the chevalier, as he had been convinced on
the night before that I was. Mendoza's proofs were registered in due
form; and with unspeakable delight I once again mounted his cabriolet,
and heard the chains of the drawbridge rattle behind me.

My Jew had been true to his pledge. I found horses provided for me at a
lonely cabaret, a league off. With the minute foresight which men of his
trade learn, he had provided for me a couple of disguises--the garb of a
peasant, which I was to use when I passed among the soldiery; and the
uniform of an aide-de-camp, with which I was to keep down enquiries when
I came among the peasantry. But I was weary of disguise. It had never
thriven with my temperament. I was determined, at all events, now to
trust to chance and my proper person; and if I must fail, have the
satisfaction of failing after my own style. The only recompense which my
magnanimous police-officer would receive, was a promise that I should
mention his conduct to Mordecai; and, gathering up his rejected
wardrobe, he departed.

Fortunately I found disguises unnecessary, though at any other time they
might have been essential. The country was all in a state of flight, and
every man was too much employed in securing himself, to think of laying
hold of others. Thus galloped I through hill and dale, through bush and
brier, unquestioned and almost unseen; until, on the evening of the
fourth day, as I plunged into a forest, which for the last half hour I
had been imagining into a scene of fairyland, a bower where a pilgrim
might finish his journey for life, or a man, "crazed by care, or crossed
in hopeless love," might forget woman and woe together--I was awakened
to the realities of things by the whistle of a bullet, which struck off
a branch within an inch of my head, followed by a fierce howl for the
countersign. By all the laws of war, the howl should have come first;
but these were not times for ceremony. A troop of Hulans rushed round
me, sabre in hand. I stood like a stoic; and, of course, attempted to
tell who I was. But my German was unintelligible to my captors, and my
French, a suspicious language on a Prussian outpost, only confirmed
their opinion that I was born to be stripped. Accordingly one demanded
my watch, another my purse, and I was in a fair way of entering the
Prussian lines in a state of pauperism, or of being "left alone in my
glory" by shot or sabre, when an officer rode up, whom I had casually
known i