grew indignant, worked
himself into a rage, burst into sarcasm:

"Oh, they showed no lack of civility!... It was, 'Monsieur le
commissaire special!... Monsieur le conseiller d'arrondissement!'...
Weisslicht had his mouth crammed with our titles!... All the same, at
one o'clock in the morning, we were safely locked up in two nice little
rooms in the town-hall at Boersweilen.... In quod, what!... With a
probable indictment for complicity, espionage, high treason and the
devil knows what hanging over our heads!... Only, in that case,
gentlemen, you should not carry politeness so far as to release your
captives from their handcuffs; and the windows of your cells ought not
to be closed with bars too slight to be of any use; and you ought not to
let one of your prisoners keep his pocket-knife. If you do, as long as
that prisoner has any grit in him--and a file to his knife, by Jove!--he
will try what he can do. And I did try, by Jingo! At four o'clock in the
morning, after cutting the window-pane and filing or loosening four of
the bars, old Morestal let himself down by a waste-pipe and took to his
heels. Kind friends, farewell!... It was now only a question of getting
home.... The Col du Diable? The Albern Woods? The Butte-aux-Loups? No
such fool! The vermin were bound to be swarming on that side.... And, in
fact, I heard the drums beating and the trumpets sounding the alarm and
the horses galloping. They were hunting for me, of course!... But how
could they have thought of hunting for me six miles away, in the Val de
Sainte-Marie, right in the middle of the Forest of Arzance? And I
trotted ... I trotted until I was simply done.... I crossed the border
at eight o'clock, unseen and unknown. Morestal's foot was on his native
heath! At ten o'clock, I saw the steeple of Saint-Elophe from the
Cote-Blanche and I cut straight across, so as to get home quicker. And
here I am! A bit tired, I admit, but quite presentable.... Well, what do
you say to old Morestal now, eh?"

He had stood up and, forgetting all about the fatigue of the night, was
enlivening his discourse with a savage display of gesture which alarmed
his wife.

"And my poor father was not able to escape?" asked Suzanne.

"No, they had taken care to search him," replied Morestal. "Besides,
they watched him more closely than they did me ... so he could not do as
I did...." And he added. "And a good job too! For I should have been
left to languish in their prisons unti