ologies, and carried off the
captive and his despatch together.

The letter was addressed to me, in French, and in a hand with which I
was unacquainted. To obtain any knowledge of its contents on my way
home, and from its bearer, was out of the question, until, with a
hundred circumlocutions, I had heard the full and entire hair-breadth
'scapes of Monsieur Hannibal Auguste Dindon. He had been the domestic of
Madame la Marechale de Tourville, and had attended her and the countess
to England in the emigration; in England he had seen me. On the
reduction of the Marechale's household he had returned to his own
country, and taken service with the Royalist army in the Vendee. There,
too, he had suffered that "fortune de la guerre", which is ill-luck with
every body but the elastic Frenchman. He had been taken prisoner, and
was on the point of being shot, when he saw the countess, a prisoner
also in the Republican hands, who interceded for his safety, and gave
him this letter, to be delivered to me if he should escape. After
following the march of the armies, a defeat scattered the Republican
division along with which they were carried; he procured a conveyance to
the coast of Britanny, and they embarked in one of the fishing vessels
for England. Again ill-luck came; a storm caught them in the Channel,
swept them the crew knew not where, and finally threw them on the
iron-bound shore of the west of Ireland. Clotilde was now actually in
the capital, on her way to England!

If ever there was wild joy in the heart of man, it was in mine at that
intelligence. It was a flash, bright, bewildering, overwhelming!

I longed to be alone, to hear no sound of the human tongue, to indulge
in the deep and silent delight of the overladen heart. But M. Hannibal
was not a personage to be disappointed of his share of interest; and, to
avoid throwing the honest prattler into absolute despair, I was forced
to listen to his adventures, until the blaze of the lamps in the
vice-royal residence, and the challenge of the sentries, reminded him,
and me too, that there were other things in the world than a
Frenchman's wanderings. The substance of his tale, however, was--that
his resources having fallen short on the road, and resolving not to
burden the finances of the countess, which he believed to be scarcely
less exhausted than his own, he had made use of his voice and guitar to
recruit his purse--a chance which he now designated as a miracle,
devi