e third night the funeral was over, the drinking
ended, the guests gone; the miller put to bed by his men, being too
drunk to help himself. They stopped a little while in the kitchen,
talking and laughing about the new housekeeper likely to come; and
they, too, went off, shutting, but not locking the door. Everything
favoured us. Amante had tried her ladder on one of the two previous
nights, and could, by a dexterous throw from beneath, unfasten it from
the hook to which it was fixed, when it had served its office; she made
up a bundle of worthless old clothes in order that we might the better
preserve our characters of a travelling pedlar and his wife; she
stuffed a hump on her back, she thickened my figure, she left her own
clothes deep down beneath a heap of others in the chest from which she
had taken the man's dress which she wore; and with a few francs in her
pocket--the sole money we had either of us had about us when we
escaped--we let ourselves down the ladder, unhooked it, and passed into
the cold darkness of night again.

We had discussed the route which it would be well for us to take while
we lay perdues in our loft. Amante had told me then that her reason for
inquiring, when we first left Les Rochers, by which way I had first
been brought to it, was to avoid the pursuit which she was sure would
first be made in the direction of Germany; but that now she thought we
might return to that district of country where my German fashion of
speaking French would excite least observation. I thought that Amante
herself had something peculiar in her accent, which I had heard M. de
la Tourelle sneer at as Norman patois; but I said not a word beyond
agreeing to her proposal that we should bend our steps towards Germany.
Once there, we should, I thought, be safe. Alas! I forgot the unruly
time that was overspreading all Europe, overturning all law, and all
the protection which law gives.

How we wandered--not daring to ask our way--how we lived, how we
struggled through many a danger and still more terrors of danger, I
shall not tell you now. I will only relate two of our adventures before
we reached Frankfort. The first, although fatal to an innocent lady,
was yet, I believe, the cause of my safety; the second I shall tell
you, that you may understand why I did not return to my former home, as
I had hoped to do when we lay in the miller's loft, and I first became
capable of groping after an idea of what my future life m