"A rock upon your head," replied the priest, "or an avalanche at your heels, which would smother you in your steel case like a lobster in his shell. Come on! come on! Sancta Maria! why, my small ass will out-run your tall charger now!" and, bestowing a buffet with his straw hat upon the flank of his bearer, the beast quickened his pace still more, and, with a malicious whisk of the tail and fling with his hind feet, set off into a gallop. But we must pause to change the scene, and precede the travellers on their way. CHAPTER II. There are few situations in life which convey to the mind of man more completely the sensations of comfort, security, and repose, than when, after a long day's ride, he sits at ease by a glowing fire, and hears--while all the ready service of a well-conducted inn is in bustling activity to minister to his wants or satisfy his appetite--the rain patter and the tempest roar without. Nor is it from any selfish comparison of their own fate with that of others less happy that men derive this sensation, notwithstanding the dictum of the most selfish of would-be philosophers. It is, on the contrary, from a comparison of their own situation at the moment with what that situation sometimes has been, or might even then be, that the good and the generous experience such feelings; and, though the thought of others exposed to the tempest must naturally cross their minds, yet that thought is mixed with pity and regret. The little inn towards which Bernard de Rohan and his companions were proceeding, under the guidance of the priest, when last we left them, though the village in which it stood contained not above nine or ten cottages, was good for the time and the country. Its only sitting-room, of course, was the great kitchen, into which the door opened from the road; but that kitchen was well fenced from the wind and rain; the windows were small, and cased in stone; the door was sheltered by a deep porch, where host and travellers sat and amused themselves in the summer daytime; and, as it was the first house met with after passing some of the steepest mountains between France and Piedmont, everything was done to make it attractive in the eyes of weary wayfarers.