The night was dull and rainy; a thick shroud of clouds was drawn over the sky, so that the summer moon could not look down with any of her sweet smiles upon her wandering companion through the blue fields of space; and the air was loaded with a foggy dampness, through which fell a few drops, increased every now and then to a momentary shower, heavy, but brief. The valley of the Seine was dark and gloomy, and the night was so obscure, that nothing met the eye of the coachman who drove the carriage containing Beatrice of Ferrara and her fair friend, except the glistening of the river as it wound along not far from the road, and the dull and somewhat indistinct line of the highway itself, which, bad and sandy at all times, was now, as we have already said, channelled and cut up by the passage of heavy carts and still heavier artillery. The second day after their flight from Paris was now drawing to its close. Beatrice, from hearing that some of the troops of the League had been hovering about in the neighbourhood of the Pont de l'Arche, had kept quiet during the latter part of the day, in a farm-house, where they had sought refreshment at noon, for themselves and horses, and was now proceeding as rapidly as possible on the high road, believing that the parties of the Union would not expose themselves to the sudden and brilliant strokes of so active a commander as Henri Quatre, by following his march too closely during the night. Eugenie, on her part, though habit and distance from her immediate persecutors had removed part of the load from her mind, was still agitated by many a fear; and her terrors were not a little increased by proceeding in the darkness over a road, the roughness of which, and the jolts thereby occasioned, precluded all possibility of conversation. Beatrice could but speak a word of comfort every now and then, which Eugenie could scarcely hear, as the carriage ground its way through the sand, or rattled over the large uneven stones. Thus had the two fair girls proceeded for nearly two hours, in the darkness, when a cry of, "Who goes there? Stand! Give the word!" brought the carriage to a sudden stop, and roused all Eugenie's fears again to the highest pitch. The lackey, who sat beside the coachman, jumped down, and went on to speak with the soldier who had challenged him; and old Joachim, who sat in the leathern projection at the side not unaptly called the boot, got out, and went on also. "Oh! Beatrice, what is this?" cried Eugenie, drawing nearer to her friend in her increasing terror. "Call me Leonard," replied Beatrice, in a gay tone; "call me Leonard! till I have got off my boy's clothes at least. What is this, do you ask, little timid fawn. Why nothing but the outpost of King Henry. They will let us pass in a minute."