Leaving his knife in the wound, he darted forward through the wood, and fortunately without meeting any one within or near it. When he reached the high-road, the darkness had so much increased as to render his features undistinguishable to the passengers, and, running towards the city, he soon reached the public promenade without the barriers, where he threw himself upon a bench, exhausted with terror and fatigue. Looking fearfully around him through the darkness, he endeavoured to collect his reasoning faculties, and immediately the recollection that he had left his knife in the throat of the murdered officer flashed upon him. With this fatal weapon were connected many old associations, which now crowded with sickening potency upon his memory. Again he saw the sarcastic grin with which his friend had said, "What we most carefully shun, is most likely to befall us." And would not the remarkable knife of Bartholdy too probably verify the malignant prophecy of its owner? Forgetful of the improbability that any one had seen in his possession a knife which, before that evening, he had never used, his senses yielded to an irresistible conviction, that this instrument of another's guilt would betray and lead him to the scaffold. Immediate flight was the only resource which presented itself to his bewildered judgment; and, rising from the bench, he hastened to his lodgings, to complete his preparations for departure the following morning. After a sleepless night, during which he started at every sound with apprehension of a nocturnal visit from the police, he proceeded at daybreak, with a heavy heart, to the post-house, where, observing a carrier's waggon on the point of departure for Normandy, he availed himself of the opportunity to facilitate his escape, by putting a few essentials into a cloak-bag, and forwarding his heavy trunk by the carrier. After some delay, of which every moment appeared an age, the diligence departed; and when the church-towers were lost in distance, the goading terrors of the unhappy fugitive yielded for a time to feelings of comparative security. His apprehensions, however, were renewed by every rising cloud of dust behind the diligence, and by every equestrian who followed and passed the vehicle. In vain did he endeavour to console himself with the consciousness that he was innocent, and under the protection of a just and merciful Providence. The judicial murder of Calas, and of other innocent sufferers, detailed in the _Causes Célèbres_ of Pitaval, were ever present to his fevered fancy; and when he closed his eyes and assumed the semblance of sleep, to avoid the conversation of his fellow-travellers, his imagination conjured up the staring orbs and satanic smile of Bartholdy, who pointed at him jeeringly, and exclaimed, "In vain you seek to shun your destiny! In France, the innocent and the guilty bleed alike upon the scaffold." And then he shouted in the ear of Florian, "Why did you part with the knife