"_Hola! mon bon Monsieur Gauntlet_; so we meet again, do we?" exclaimed a familiar voice; and a cry escaped the women, when I found myself confronted by the Count de Bourgneuf, who shrugged his shoulders in the true French style, till his epaulettes touched his ears, while a fierce, ironical, and almost diabolical smile spread over his visage, and he ground his teeth. "_Aha, mon garcon!_" he continued, making me a series of mock bows, and then I perceived that he had a cocked pistol dangling in each hand: "so I've caught you at last, eh?" CHAPTER XIV. THE WHISPERED ORDER. In his rage, Bourgneuf, with each ironical bow, shook from his brigadier wig the white powder which he wore in great profusion. The danger was imminent; peril menaced me in front and rear; the winter storm without, and an absurdly jealous foe within. I drew the pistol from my belt; but, alas! the pan was open, and the snow, when I fell into the ditch of the schloss, had replaced the priming. It was useless; however, as Bourgneuf was levelling his first weapon at my head, I rushed upon him, struck up the muzzle with my left hand, so that in exploding the ball pierced the ceiling. With my pistol-butt I struck the weapon from his other hand, and seized him by the throat; but the room was almost immediately filled by soldiers of the Regiment de Bretagne, who beat me down and disarmed me. The count drew my sword from its scabbard, and contemptuously snapped the blade under his foot, saying, "_Ha! pst-sacré coquin-pst!_" as I was dragged into another apartment, and the door of the countess's room was closed and locked upon her and her attendant, whose cries I could hear ringing through the mansion; and as they seemed the prelude to some deed of cruelty and violence, I felt that in hands so unscrupulous I was helpless and completely lost. However, I did not give in without a desperate struggle. From Tom Kirkton, who in his wilder days had practised at Marybone and Hockly-in-the-Hole, I had picked up a little of the good old English science of self-defence, so I struck out right and left, and knocked over the crapauds like ninepins, till the butt-end of a musket laid me on the field of battle, and for a time I thought all was over. I was now rifled. The two louis of kind Boisguiller were speedily appropriated. The pass of the Duc de Broglie and the little laced handkerchief of Aurora, which I still preserved as a souvenir of my only relative, were handed to the count. He laughed at the first, but the sight of the second transported him with a fury only equal to that of the Moor on the loss of that important handkerchief which the Egyptian to his mother gave, and which had "magic in the web of it." "Count Bourgneuf," I exclaimed, resolutely, on recovering my breath, for timidity, I found, would be of little avail here; "you have in your hand the signed passport of the Duc de Broglie; how dare you thus to violate it?"