While surveying the river on one side, and the pillared recesses of the Maison au Dauphin on the other, espying a fancied lurker in every shadowy depth, all the old stories I had heard of Paris floated through my mind; for I had been told that there were quarters of the city, such as the infamous Cour des Miracles, into which neither the sergeants of the Provost, nor the officers of the Chatelet dared to venture--strongholds of vice and villany, where mohawks, midnight assassins, house-breakers, cloak-snatchers, cut-purses, Spanish gypsies, Italian musicians, German mountebanks, Jew vendors of quack medicine, and women whose fall, like that of angels, had brought them far from heaven, repaired by day; and from whence, like a living and pestilent flood, they issued by night to ensnare, and waylay the unwary and the wandering. Then there were lacqueys, pages, nobles, and gallants, who went about masked, muffled, and armed to the teeth, fighting the watch, insulting the peaceful, carrying off pretty girls, _sabre à la main_, and committing such outrages that in 1607 it was computed that since the accession of Henry IV the number of French gentlemen slain in duels alone amounted to _four thousand_.* * Lomenie--Mém. Hist. de France. I thought of these things, and keeping my cloak well about me with one hand, kept the other on the pommel of my sword. Turning to quit the Place de la Grève (I have learned all the local names since that eventful night), I stood a moment irresolute whether to take the alley which leads into the Rue Coutellerie and from thence towards the Faubourg St. Martin, when a cry arrested my steps. It seemed to come from the shadow of Rolande's Tower, an old building half Roman and half Gothic, in a cell of which Madame de Rolande, the daughter of a French crusader, died of grief in the days of St. Louis, and which stands at the corner of the Place, near the Rue de la Tannerie and close to the river. Then a woman rushed towards me exclaiming, 'Monsieur, if you are a gentleman you will protect me!' 'With my life, madame,' I replied. 'With your sword would be more to the purpose,' said she, as I took her hand; 'by your voice you are a Scottish archer?' 'Would to heaven I were! I am but a poor gentleman, forced to leave his own country and seek military service in France.' 'Your name--' 'Arthur Blane, of Blanerne,--but who are they that pursue you?' I asked, while endeavouring to make out her features, which were partly concealed by a black velvet mask, through the holes of which her eyes sparkled with no common animation. By her voice she seemed young; by her bearing noble; and by her gloveless hands, which were small, white, and soft, I was assured that she was beautiful. 'Lady,' I resumed; 'to where shall I conduct you?' 'On your honour, I charge you neither to conduct nor follow me.' 'But you were molested--'