“How should I know, Citizen Thibaut? Spinning webs under the trees, maybe, to catch unwary flies. They and others spend much of each day in the suburbs. It is the custom of attorneys, as it is of story-writers, to hatch their plots in green nooks. They brood for a week that they may speak for an hour. Robespierre comes to Passy and Auteuil for inspiration. Couthon goes every day to Neuilly for bagatelle. My faith, but how these advocates make morality unattractive! A dozen lawyers amongst the elect would produce a second revolt of the angels. That is why the devil is loath to recall them.” “To recall them?” “They are his ambassadors, monsieur, and it is his trouble that they are for ever being handed their passports to quit such soil as he would be represented on. Then they return to him for fresh instructions; but they will not understand that human passions are not to be controlled by rule of thumb.” “Or sounded by depth of plumb, Crépin; and, upon my word, you are a fine bailiff to your masters.” Now, I have no wish to detail the processes of our monotonous journey into the south-westerly departments, whereto--that is to say, to the borders of Dordogne--it took us eight days to travel. We had our excitements, our vexations, our adventures even; but these were by the way, and without bearing on what I have set myself to relate. One evening as we were lazily rolling along an empty country road, making for the little walled town of Coutras, where the fourth Henry was known to his credit once upon a time, a trace snapped, leading to more damage and a little confusion amongst the horses. I alighted in a hurry--Crépin, whose veins were congested with Bordeaux, slumbering profoundly on in his corner--and finding that the accident must cause us some small delay, strolled back along the road we had come by, for it looked beautiful in perspective. Our escort, I may say, affecting ignorance of our mishap, had rattled on into the dusk. It was a night for love, or fairies, or any of those little gracious interchanges of soul that France had nothing the art to conceive in those years. The wind, that had toyed all day with flowers, was sweet with a languorous and desirable playfulness; a ripening girl moon sat low on a causeway of mist, embroidering a banner of cloud that blew from her hands; the floating hills were hung with blots of woodland, and to peer into the trance of sky was to catch a star here and there like a note of music.