r turned to Cesarini, "Sir, will you favour me
with your snuff-box?"

"I have none."

"None? what a pity! My good friend," and he turned to the scout, "may
I request you to look in my room for my snuff-box? It is on the
chimney-piece,--it will not take you a minute."

The soldier was one of those whose insanity was deemed most harmless,
and his relations, who were rich and wellborn, had requested every
indulgence to be shown to him. The watch suspected nothing, and repaired
to the house. As soon as the trees hid him,--"Now," said the soldier,
"stoop almost on all fours, and run quick."

So saying the maniac crouched low, and glided along with a rapidity
which did not distance Cesarini. They reached the paling that separated
the vegetable garden from the pleasure-ground; the soldier vaulted over
it with ease, Cesarini with more difficulty followed. They crept along;
the herbs and vegetable beds, with their long bare stalks, concealed
their movements; the man was still on the ladder. "_La bonne
Esperance,_" said the soldier through his ground teeth, muttering some
old watchword of the wars, and (while Cesarini, below, held the ladder
steadfast) he rushed up the steps, and with a sudden effort of his
muscular arm, hurled the gardener to the ground. The man, surprised,
half stunned, and wholly terrified, did not attempt to wrestle with
the two madmen, he uttered loud cries for help! But help came too late;
these strange and fearful comrades had already scaled the wall, had
dropped on the other side, and were fast making across the dusky fields
to the neighbouring forest.

CHAPTER V.

HOPES and Fears
Start up alarmed, and o'er life's narrow verge
Look down: on what?--a fathomless abyss!--YOUNG.

MIDNIGHT--and intense frost! There they were--houseless and
breadless--the two fugitives, in the heart of that beautiful forest
which has rung to the horns of many a royal chase. The soldier, whose
youth had been inured to hardships, and to the conquests which our
mother-wit wrings from the stepdame Nature, had made a fire by the
friction of two pieces of dry wood; such wood was hard to be found, for
the snow whitened the level ground, and lay deep in the hollows; and
when it was discovered, the fuel was slow to burn; however, the fire
blazed red at last. On a little mound, shaded by a semicircle of huge
trees, sat the Outlaws of Human Reason. They cowered over the blaze
opposite to each other,