'Falaise dans sa vielle tour Vit entrer la fillette, Et c'est là que le Dieu d'amour Finit l'historiette; Anglais, honorez ces amans! Vive le fils d'Harlette! _Normands, Vive le fils d'Harlette!_ 'Diable! take care, monsieur, or I am through you--my sword is like a spit in the king's kitchen. Peste! take time, fellow--Death himself could not be more impatient than you. A devil of a thrust that--our little flash in the pan is really becoming quite serious!' I pressed so close upon him, that once the bowl-hilts of our swords touched and rung; but at a moment, when this gay chevalier, who treated my fencing with such coolness and contempt, slipped his left foot, and consequently raised his guard a little, I lunged furiously within, and drove my sword nearly to the cross guard through his ribs on the right side. Poor wretch! he uttered a sound something between a sob and a cry, while instinctively I drew back my blade to parry the return his hand could never give me now. His eyes glared and closed, the sword dropped from his fingers, and, deluged in blood, he sunk upon the causeway. I found myself face to face with a dying man, and this cooled us all. 'Monsieur,' said his companion, hurriedly, 'we have been to blame; you are a stranger, fly!' 'Whither?' I asked, wildly; 'I have already lost my way.' 'Morbleu! you will find it soon enough; to the Bastille, if the watch overtake you!' This dreadful word _Bastille_ gave me fresh resolution. 'Away, away, monsieur!' gasped the wounded man, half choked in his blood; 'take this ring--' he struggled to get it off his finger; 'oh, Monseigneur le Prince, give him this--my ring; the lieutenant of the watch is my friend--away! I have known a man branded with the fleur de lys, and broken alive on the wheel, for less than this.' 'If taken, show the ring of the chevalier to the lieutenant, and you will be allowed to pass.' 'But we must see each other again--' 'Trust to heaven for that,' gasped the wounded man, adding generously, 'away! I hear footsteps--'tis the watch!' 'Forgive me, Chevalier,' said I, trembling with emotion, 'but this quarrel was not of my seeking.' 'From my soul I forgive you, but begone.' 'Farewell!' And with this word I turned and fled, just as a mounted patrol of the watch turned the corner of the Rue de la Mortellerie, and entered the Place de la Grève. CHAPTER III. THE CHATEAU. 'In the affairs of every one,' says a French writer, 'there is a moment which decides upon his future. It is almost always chance, which takes a man as the wind does a leaf, and throws him into some new and unknown path, where, once entered, he is obliged to obey a superior force, and where, while believing himself free, he is but _the slave of circumstances, and the plaything of events_.' I have been much struck by the force and truth of this passage, which seems to bear directly upon my own career in life:--to resume.