from Paris to Arcis is by
the county road which turns off, as we have said, near the Belle Etoile.
The Aube is navigable only from Arcis to its mouth. Therefore this town,
standing eighteen miles from a high-road, and separated from Troyes by
monotonous plains, is isolated more or less, and has but little commerce
or transportation either by land or water. Arcis is, in fact, a town
completely isolated, where no travellers pass, and is attached to Troyes
and La Belle Etoile by stage-coaches only. All the inhabitants know each
other; they even know the commercial travellers who come, now and then,
on business from the large Parisian houses. Thus, as in all provincial
towns in a like position, a stranger, if he stayed two days, would wag
the tongues and excite the imaginations of the whole community without
his name or his business being known.

Now, Arcis being still in a state of tranquillity three days before
the morning when, by the will of the creator of so many histories,
the present tale begins, there was seen to arrive by the county road
a stranger, driving a handsome tilbury drawn by a valuable horse,
and accompanied by a tiny groom, no bigger than my fist, mounted on a
saddle-horse. The coach, connecting with the diligences to Troyes, had
brought from La Belle Etoile three trunks coming from Paris, marked with
no name, but belonging to this stranger, who took up his quarters at the
Mulet inn. Every one in Arcis supposed, on the first evening, that this
personage had come with the intention of buying the estate of Arcis; and
much was said in all households about the future owner of the chateau.
The tilbury, the traveller, his horses, his servant, one and all
appeared to belong to a man who had dropped upon Arcis from the highest
social sphere.

The stranger, no doubt fatigued, did not show himself for a time;
perhaps he spent part of the day in arranging himself in the rooms
he had chosen, announcing his intention of staying a certain time. He
requested to see the stable where his horses were to be kept, showed
himself very exacting, and insisted that they should be placed in stalls
apart from those of the innkeeper's horses, and from those of guests who
might come later. In consequence of such singular demands, the landlord
of the hotel du Mulet considered his guest to be an Englishman.

On the evening of the first day several attempts were made at the Mulet
by inquisitive persons to satisfy their curiosity; bu