It may be necessary to remind the reader that Franche Comté was not annexed to France till the year 1668; and at the time of which I now write the important town of Gray was a fortified place, consisting of the city on the high ground strongly walled, and a suburb on the bank of the Saône, defended merely by a small battery. For a long period of troublous times, so frequent had been the visits of French exiles to Lorraine, Burgundy, and Franche Comté, that safe-conducts or passports from one country to another were very generally dispensed with in the country and in open towns; but in fortresses some trouble was experienced; and it is probable that the directions which the Duchesse de Chevreuse had given Edward Langdale to stop in the faubourg were intended to guard against his detention. The inn which she had named to him was good, however,--perhaps better than that in the upper town; and the appointed two days of Edward's stay passed dully but not unpleasantly. The horses were refreshed and the two men none the worse for the repose. For Edward himself, too, perhaps two days of thought were beneficial. Every man, in the toil and tumult and hurry of the world, requires some moment to pause and consider his position, to decide upon his future course, to apply the lesson of past errors, to take breath as it were amidst the bustle of existence. Edward was like a stout swimmer who had been suddenly plunged into a torrent, and was likely to be carried away by the flood which for the last three months had been whirling confusedly round him; and those two days at Gray were like a little island of dry ground where he could rest and scan his way to the opposite bank, avoiding the rocks and eddies which might impede or destroy him. It is a quaint old proverb, but a true one, that "a man who does not look clearly before him will often have to look sadly behind him;" and happy is he who has both the will and the time to do so. Those two days then with Edward passed in almost uninterrupted thought; but at last the night of the second day came, and yet neither message nor letter had arrived. Supper had been eaten, and the horses had been ordered for daybreak on the following morning to proceed to Turin, when, toward nine o'clock, the landlord brought in a scrap of writing, asking Edward if that was intended for him. It was addressed in English,--"Master Edward Langdale,"--and underneath was written, "Join me at Chambéry or Aix. I shall be there from the twenty-ninth till the first." No name was signed, but the writing was Lord Montagu's; and the landlord, on being questioned, said the paper had been given to him by a courier from Arnay le Duc going to Vesoul, who had gone on his way as soon as he had left it.