'It will not mend the matter: but in case you are actually watched, leave Nanci to-night, as pre-arranged; but do not set forward, lest there be an ambuscade on one or both of the roads. There is an old chapel of St. Nicolas in the Wood, a mile below the city, on the right bank of the river. A pathway diverging to the left near an old stone cross leads directly to it; there you can remain till morning, and then ride boldly forward. You will have a long summer day's march before you, and by nightfall may see the ramparts of Elsace-Zaberne still glittering, I hope, with the helmets of Mulheim's brave Lorrainers.' I thanked Vaudemont, and bade him adieu with a depth of feeling that must have surprised him; but he was the brother of her I loved more than all the world beside; and, moreover, with all his recklessness and devil-may-care spirit, he was a gallant and generous youth, who struggled nobly but vainly in after years to regild the faded glories of his house. I rode from the palace and through the principal street of Nanci, that my departure might be seen by all who felt any interest therein; and quitting the city by one of its northern gates, trotted along the well-wooded highway, that led towards the frontier. At the stone cross, which stood near a well, I turned my horse, as directed by the Prince; and after throwing a sharp glance round me, to assure myself that no secret eye was upon me, I descended into a dell, covered by thick dark copsewood, and rode rapidly in search of the ancient chapel, in which, like a hero of the Round Table, I was to pass the night alone. The sun had set beyond the valleys of the Meuse and the Moselle, and the last gleams of the west bathed with a saffron tint the walls and towers, the spires and ducal palace, of Nanci, as they rose to the eastward of my path, above green groves of full-bearing orange and plum trees. Torrents of rain had recently fallen amid the woods and snows of the Vosges: thus the waters of the Meurthe were swollen, and I heard their current roaring in full flood as they rolled through the echoing woods of the valley I traversed.