night the funeral was over, the drinking
ended, the guests gone; the miller put to bed by his men, being too
drunk to help himself. They stopped a little while in the kitchen,
talking and laughing about the new housekeeper likely to come; and they,
too, went off, shutting, but not locking the door. Everything favoured
us. Amante had tried her ladder on one of the two previous nights, and
could, by a dexterous throw from beneath, unfasten it from the hook to
which it was fixed, when it had served its office; she made up a bundle
of worthless old clothes in order that we might the better preserve our
characters of a travelling pedlar and his wife; she stuffed a hump on
her back, she thickened my figure, she left her own clothes deep down
beneath a heap of others in the chest from which she had taken the man's
dress which she wore; and with a few francs in her pocket--the sole
money we had either of us had about us when we escaped--we let ourselves
down the ladder, unhooked it, and passed into the cold darkness of night
again.

We had discussed the route which it would be well for us to take while
we lay perdues in our loft. Amante had told me then that her reason for
inquiring, when we first left Les Rochers, by which way I had first been
brought to it, was to avoid the pursuit which she was sure would first
be made in the direction of Germany; but that now she thought we might
return to that district of country where my German fashion of speaking
French would excite least observation. I thought that Amante herself had
something peculiar in her accent, which I had heard M. de la Tourelle
sneer at as Norman patois; but I said not a word beyond agreeing to her
proposal that we should bend our steps towards Germany. Once there, we
should, I thought, be safe. Alas! I forgot the unruly time that was
overspreading all Europe, overturning all law, and all the protection
which law gives.

How we wandered--not daring to ask our way--how we lived, how we struggled
through many a danger and still more terrors of danger, I shall not tell
you now. I will only relate two of our adventures before we reached
Frankfort. The first, although fatal to an innocent lady, was yet, I
believe, the cause of my safety; the second I shall tell you, that you
may understand why I did not return to my former home, as I had hoped to
do when we lay in the miller's loft, and I first became capable of
groping after an idea of what my future life might be