"Over rich ragouts and heady burgundy the hours slipped lightly by, and I could see in my little Phillis's sparkling eye her satisfaction with the conquest she had made. Alas! that mortal joy should be so transitive! In the midst of our happiness, care, and melancholy, and gloom, and despite rushed suddenly upon us, in the form of four ferocious archers, who pitilessly arrested Phillis on the charge of having robbed her former venerable protector, and hurried me to prison along with her as an accomplice. "Phillis had taken care to hide the place of her retreat, but she knew not the cunning of archers; and though, when they came, she protested her innocence in terms that would have convinced the hard heart of Minos, and won the unwilling ears of Rhadamanthus, yet, as the whole of the stolen goods were found in her valise, the unfeeling archers would not believe a word; and, as I have said before, we were both hurried to prison, without any farther ceremony than taking from us every farthing that we had in the world. "The next morning we were brought before a magistrate, who reserved Phillis's case for his private consideration. As to mine, as nothing could be proved against me, except that I had called myself the Count de Grilmagnac without being able clearly to prove all my quarters of nobility, I was ordered to be whipped through the town for my ignorance of heraldry, and then discharged. My whipping I bore with Christian fortitude; but the loss of my doublet, which the executioner kept for his fee, and the loss of my money, which the archers kept because they liked it, tore my heartstrings; and setting out from that accursed town of Lyons, where injustice and cruelty walk hand-in-hand, I begged my way to Paris, and reached the famous hotel where you had appointed me to meet you. There the landlord told me no such person as your lordship resided, and bade me get out for a lazy beggar. A black dog, that stood in the yard, instantly took up the matter where the landlord left off, and I was in the act of making my escape from them both when the boy you sent arrived, inquiring for me. "The joy which took possession of my heart, I need not tell; suffice it that I made the boy run all the way here, and that, having now found you, I have determined never to leave you, or let you leave me again; for while we were together nothing but good fortune attended us, and since we have been separated nothing but ill-luck has been my share; so that the only consolation I can have, will be to hear, that while my scale was down, yours has been up, and that Dame Fortune has at least befriended one of us." I could not refuse to tell my history also to my little attendant, though it occasioned less amusement to him than his had done to me; and his face grew longer and longer at every incident I detailed, till at last, passing over all that regarded Helen, I informed him that, on being conveyed home I found my pocket encumbered with a hundred louis.