ntlemen," said the old general,
smiling, "is something, but circumstances are necessary to make it
valuable. There never was a finer night for an investigation of the
stars, if I had been an astronomer; and I dare say that the spot which
formed my position would have been capital for an observatory; but the
torches which danced up and down through the old and very dingy
casements of the mansion, were a matter of much more curious remark to
me than if I had discovered a new constellation.

"At length I was chased even out of this spot--my door had been found
out. I have too much gallantry left to suppose that my Breton had
betrayed me; though a dagger at her heart and a purse in her hand might
be powerful arguments against saving the life of an old soldier who had
reached his grand climacteric. At all events, as I saw torch after torch
rising along the roofs, I moved into the darkness.

"I had here a new adventure. I saw a feeble light gleaming through the
roof. An incautious step brought me upon a skylight, and I went through;
my fall, however, being deadened by bursting my way through the canopy
of a bed. I had fallen into the hospital of the chateau. A old Beguine
was reading her breviary in an adjoining room. She rushed in with a
scream. But those women are so much accustomed to casualties that I had
no sooner acquainted her with the reasons of my flight, than she offered
to assist my escape. She had been for some days in attendance on a sick
servant. She led me down to the entrance of a subterranean communication
between the mansion and the river, one of the old works which had
probably been of serious service in the days when every chateau in the
West was a fortress. The boat which had brought her from the convent was
at the mouth of the subterranean; there, the Loire was open. If you ask,
why I did not prefer throwing myself before the pursuers, and dying like
a soldier, my reason was, that I should have been numbered merely among
those who had fallen obscurely in the various skirmishes of the country;
and besides, that if I escaped, I should have one chance more of
preserving the province.

"But, at the moment when I thought myself most secure, I was in reality
in the greatest peril. The Loire had long since broken into the work,
which had probably never seen a mason since the wars of the League. I
had made no calculation for this, and I had descended but a few steps,
when I found my feet in water. I went on, h