ope your face will be washed, for it is like a blackamoor's now, with
burnt powder."

Mademoiselle curtsied low to Count Saxe, and said sweetly, as if in
amends for her pettishness:

"Good by, and a thousand thanks for your goodness, Monsieur de Saxe.
My house of Capello is yours whenever you are in its neighborhood.
Good by, Captain Babache. When my eyes rest on you again, you will be
the welcomest sight in the world."

If I had been a ready man, like Francois Marie Voltaire, for example,
I could have replied to this kind speech with something handsome. But
being only Babache, a Tatar prince from the Marais, all I could think
of to say was:

"Good by, Mademoiselle; may God help you."

I saw them depart and my heart was heavy. True, it would require some
ingenuity on their part to get them into trouble, but I suspected both
of them had talents as well as a taste in that line.

But now we had serious business of our own on hand. Beauvais brought
us the three horses, which had been tethered in the courtyard.
Everything was arranged; the firing kept up to the last, although our
last was done with bits of broken nails and of silver pieces of money.
At last the great dusky moon showed only a rim upon the far horizon,
and then seemed suddenly engulfed in a great abyss of darkness.

At a signal, the drawbridge fell with a crash. We were already on
horseback, and dashed across the bridge into the open place and toward
the brick wall. Every man of ours was at our heels. The Russians were
completely dazed. Half of them rushed into the courtyard only to find
it empty. The rest ran hither and thither, afraid to fire in the
darkness, and before they could rally, or could find out what we were
really after, every man of us was mounted and away. We had a good
twenty minutes' start, for the noise among the Russians drowned the
sound of our hoofbeats. We had only one street of the town to traverse
before we struck the highway. The Russians had no inkling that we were
making for Uzmaiz, and not half an hour from the time we started came
a deluge of rain, the welcomest imaginable; for in that downpour the
Russians lost us and never found us again. We fared on, knowing every
foot of the way, for Count Saxe had made himself thoroughly familiar
with this road to his island fortress. Bridges were down, and the
roads were mere quagmires, but these were small difficulties to
nineteen seasoned men, riding for their lives.

We bivouacke