ing up and down. I saw nothing to alarm
me; darkness had completely fallen, no one was moving, the neighbourhood
seemed to be of the quietest. I made up my mind to take the bold course:
to return at all hazards to the Rue St. Honore, seek my father-in-law at
the gates of the Palais Royal--where he had the night turn--and throw
the child and myself on his protection.

Without doubt it was the wisest course I could adopt. In those days the
streets of Paris, even in the district of the Louvre and Palais Royal,
were ill-lighted; a network of lanes and dark courts encroached on the
most fashionable parts, and favoured secret access to them, and I
foresaw no great difficulty, short of the moment when I must appear in
the lighted lodge and exhibit my rags. But my evil star was still above
the horizon. I had scarcely reached the end of the lane; I was still
hesitating there, uncertain which way to turn for the shortest course,
when a babel of voices broke on my ear, lights swept round a distant
corner, and I found myself threatened by a new danger. I did not wait to
consider. These people, with their torches and weapons, might have
naught to do with me. But my nerves were shaken, the streets of Paris
were full of terrors, every corner had a gallows for me--and I turned
and, fleeing back the way I had come, I made a hurried effort to find
the house which had sheltered me before. Failing, in one or two trials,
and seeing that the lights were steadily coming on that way, and that in
a moment I must be discovered, I sprang across the way, and dived into
the side-lane by which the child-stealer had vanished.

I had not taken ten steps before some object, unseen in the darkness,
tripped me up, and I fell headlong on the stones. In the fall my burden
rolled from my arms; instantly it was snatched up by a dark figure,
which rose as by magic beside me, and was gone into the gloom almost as
quickly. I got up gasping and limping, and flung a curse after the man;
but the lights already shone on the mouth of the lane in which I stood,
and I had no time to lose if I would not be detected. I set off running
down the passage, turned to the left at the end, and along a second
lane, thence passed into another and a wider road; nor did I stop until
I had left all signs and sounds of pursuit far behind me.

The place in which I came to a stand at last--too weak to run any
farther--was a piece of waste land, in the northern suburbs of the city.
H