"Perfectly," replied Corse de Leon: "I saw her across the frontier yesterday. Besides, as I told you before, the Lord of Masseran himself is absent, carried by fears regarding the discovery of his own treachery into the very jaws of the lion, power. Power is the only true basilisk. Its eyes are those alone in this world which can fascinate the small things hovering round it to drop into its mouth. But the lady is safe. Be satisfied, and you can well overtake her ere she reaches Grenoble. I bade them send back a man to tell me if she found not her brother there; for, as I am going to Paris also, I thought perchance it might be better to keep near her on the road, and bring her help in case she needed it. But your own men are enough, I do not doubt, and I can but take few with me, if any." "But is it not dangerous," said the young nobleman, "for you to travel immediately after receiving so severe an injury?" "Dangerous!" said Corse de Leon; "oh, there is no danger in such things. I do believe these mountains that I love will crush me at last; for twice have I escaped almost by a miracle. But it is this injury, as you call it, that has determined me to go now. I can be of but little active use here till I can climb a rock again, and use this left arm as well as the right. No man has a title to remain an hour in idleness, whatever be his calling. Sleep itself I do not rightly understand: it is a lapse in the active exertion of our being which is very strange, a sort of calm pool in the midst of a torrent: I suppose it is solely for the body's sake. There could have been no sleep before death came into the world; for, not being subject to decay, the earthly frame could require no refreshment any more than the spirit. However, as I was saying, idle and inactive drones pretend that they must have rest and pause: if the head aches or the hand is hurt, they declare that they can neither think nor labour; but the wise man and the energetic man makes his spirit like that monstrous serpent which I have heard of, and which, when one head was smitten off, produced at once another. If a man cannot walk, he can ride; if a man's right arm be broken, let him use his left; if his eyes be put out, his ears will hear but the better--let him use them. Our manifold senses are but manifold capabilities; and if the mind is debarred from using one of its tools, it must use another. No man need want employment for the senses, the limbs, and the means that he has left, if he chooses to seek for it. For a while I shall be of no good upon the mountain, and therefore I am going to the city. Some time or another I must go, and therefore I may as well go now. But here comes the old woman with my mess of food. You must take some with me. No one knows better than she does how to cook the chamois, or the venison, or to roast the shining trout in the ashes, or the snow-fowl over the fire; and as for wine, the cellar of an archbishop or of a prior of a