While I proffered my thanks to him for his guidance, I could not help expressing my wish to make some slight return for it. A dark, disdainful look soon stopped me in my speech, and I turned it off in a desire to leave some souvenir of my night’s lodging behind me in the old tower. But even this he would not hear of; and when I stretched out my hand to bid him good-bye, he took it with a cold and distant courtesy, as though he were condescending to a favour he had no fancy for. ‘Adieu, monsieur,’ said I, still tempted, by a last effort of allusion to his once condition, to draw something from him--‘adieu!’ He approached me nearer, and with a voice of tremulous eagerness, he muttered-- ‘Not a word yonder, not a syllable! Pledge me your faith in that!’ Thinking now that it was merely the recurrence of his paroxysm, I answered carelessly, ‘Never fear, I’ll say nothing.’ ‘Yes, but swear it,’ said he, with a fixed look of his dark eye; ‘swear it to me now, that so long as you are below there’--he pointed to the valley--‘you will never speak of me.’ I made him the promise he required, though with great unwillingness, as my curiosity to learn something about him was becoming intense. ‘Not a word!’ said he, with a finger on his lip, ‘that’s the _consigne_. ‘Not a word!’ repeated I, and we parted. CHAPTER XVII. THE BORE--A SOLDIER OF THE EMPIRE. Two hours after, I was enjoying the pleasant fire of the Hôtel de Flandre, where I arrived in time for table d’hôte, not a little to the surprise of the host and six waiters, who were totally lost in conjectures to account for my route, and sorely puzzled to ascertain the name of my last hotel in the mountains.