"Ah! Good heavens! Confound it all!" he shouted. "When I have stopped my horses you shall answer for this, I can tell you!" "Now, what do you intend to do, Levasseur?" I asked, laughing. "To unharness them, and leave you and your trap in the middle of the road.... We shall see if it is allowable to put the poor beasts into such a state." And by degrees he calmed his horses down. "Hand me one of my pistols," I said to Bard. "What for?" "Pass it, quick." "You aren't going to blow his brains out?" "I am, indeed!" "They are not loaded." "I am going to load them." Bard gazed at me in terror. I put a percussion cap on each nipple and rammed a wad down the centre of each barrel. I had just finished the operation when the carriage pulled up, and the postillion got down, swearing, to unfasten the traces, as he had threatened, lifting up his legs one after the other heavily in their great boots. I waited for him, pistol in hand. "Look here, Levasseur," I said, "if you touch those traces I shall smash your head for you." He raised his eyes and saw the two muzzles of the pistol. "Stuff!" he said, "you daren't kill people that fashion!" And he put his hands to the traces. "Levasseur, take care what you are doing! Do you mean to take out the horses?" "The horses are mine, and, when they are over-driven, I unharness them." "Have you a wife and children?" Again he looked up; the question struck him as an unusual one. "Yes, I have a wife and four children--a boy and three girls." "Well, then, Levasseur, let me warn you that, if you do not let the traces alone, the Republic will be obliged to grant a pension to your family." He began to laugh and to grip the traces with both hands. I pressed the trigger, the cap exploded and the wad hit my man in the middle of his face. He believed he was killed and fell backwards, his face between his hands, half fainting. Before he had recovered from the shock and astonishment I had drawn off his boots, as Tom Thumb drew off the Ogre's, put them on my own legs, jumped astride the saddle-horse, and we set off at full gallop. Bard nearly fell into the floor of the carriage with laughing. When we had gone three or four hundred yards, I turned round, though I still kept on whipping the horses, and I saw old Levasseur had sat up and begun to collect his senses. A tiny hill we were ascending soon hid him from my sight. I had still nearly a league and a half to make, but I caught up the lost time and did it in seventeen minutes. I reached the post at Levignan with a grand flourish of whips, and, when I pulled the horses up, two persons appeared on the threshold. One was the posting-master, M. Labbé, himself; the other my old friend Cartier, the timber-merchant. Both recognised me at the same time. "Why; you, my boy!" said Labbé. "Things have gone badly with you then if you have come down to being a postillion?" Cartier gave me his hands. "What the devil have you come in such an equipage as that for?"