Notwithstanding the turbulent elements which rendered every state of life perilous in those days, the landlord of the _auberge_, however isolated was his dwelling, did not, in fact, run so much risk as may be supposed; for by a sort of common consent, proceeding from a general conviction of the great utility of his existence, and the comfort which all parties had at various times derived from his ever-ready welcome, the innkeeper's dwelling was almost universally exempt from pillage, except, indeed, in those cases where the party spirit of the day had got the better of that interested moderation in politics which is such a distinguishing feature of the class, and had led him to espouse one of the fierce factions of the times with somewhat imprudent vehemence. Nevertheless, it need hardly be said, that between the several villages, and the several detached houses which chequered the forest of Evreux, large spaces were left without anything like a human habitation; and the traveller on either of the two highways, or on any of the multifarious cross-roads which wandered through the woods, might walk on for many a long and weary mile, without seeing anything in the likeness of mankind. Perhaps, indeed, he might think himself lucky if he did find it so; for--as there then existed three or four belligerent parties in France, besides various bodies who took advantage of the discrepancy of other people's opinions upon most subjects, to assert their own ideas of property at the point of the sword--there was every chance that, in any accidental rencontre, the traveller would find the first person he met a great deal more attached to the sword than to the olive branch.