clock strike four, she arose and did all the housework.
Before daybreak she went into the wood to get kindling. Indeed, ever
since her misfortune her activity was morbid: she seemed anxious to
compensate for the idle life of Florian. Though no thanks rewarded her
industry, she had scarcely left a nook or corner of the house not
garnered with dry sticks and fir-cones.

At the edge of the wood she found a white button, which she recognised
as belonging to Florian's jacket and secreted in her bosom. Looking
over the landscape, she said to herself, "My cross is great; and if I
were to climb to the top of the highest hill I couldn't look beyond
it."

She returned without having gathered any thing. On hearing of Florian's
flight, she wept and rejoiced: she wept because she could no longer
doubt he was a criminal, and rejoiced to know that he was free.

13.
THE GAUNTLET.

At night Florian built himself a hut of some sheaves in a harvest-field
and slept in it.

In a tavern he had stolen a knife, having at the same time concealed
twelve creutzers in the salt-cellar: with this implement he now scraped
off his mustache.

Nevertheless, he had no sooner crossed the frontier than he was
arrested. This time he did not stop to enlist the pity of the _gens
d'armes_, but defended himself with all his might and made desperate
efforts to get free: he was thrown down, however, and manacled.

He was now forwarded from circuit to circuit by the hands of the _gens
d'armes_. In silence he walked along, his right hand chained to his
right foot: he looked upon himself as upon an animal driven to the
slaughter.

But when, coming from Sulz, he issued from the Empfingen copse and
found that he was to be dragged in chains through his native village,
he fell on his knees before the _gens d'armes_ and begged him with
tears to be so merciful as to take him around outside of the village.

But the voice of authority answered "No," and Florian struck his left
hand into his eyes to blind himself to his own degradation: his right
hand rattled helplessly in the chain. Florian--the cynosure of
neighboring eyes, he who had known no keener joy than to be the object
of universal attention--was now to be exposed in these shameful
trappings and in such disgraceful company. For the first time in his
life he could have prayed that people might not have eyes to cast upon
him. As he passed