Never before in his active life had he been out of the world. He was so now, and the distance confused all his faculties. He had lost sight of everything he knew, of all that he had calculated upon, of all the influences which had affected him before. The people about, in the _cabarets_, by the roadside, talked politics indeed, but their discussions seemed so fantastic and unreal to the constitutional Englishman, that they rather increased than lessened his sense that he was out of the world altogether, drifted into some other life. Those wild theories of universal right, broken lights of communism, all the more lurid because of the passion of proprietorship with which they were mixed; the hatred of the aristocrats; the fear of the Church; all those prejudices which were so extraordinary to his mind, looked to him like something got up for his admiration and bewilderment,--scenes at the theatre, which not even the players themselves could believe in. They amused him greatly, being all sham as he thought, dramatic exhibitions natural to the French character; he for one was not taken in by them; but they convinced him more and more of the unreality of this life. He had got into some enchanter’s cave, some lotus island; he did not know at all what was going on outside. Was he a man for whom there was search being made, and with a price upon his head? Or had he dropped out of all agitations whatsoever, out of knowledge of the world? He could not tell; he had not seen a ‘Times’ since he had left London. One terrible fit of alarm he had gone through at Sainte-Barbe. But Charley Ashton certainly could not have known anything, or he would have let it somehow appear in his looks, even if he had taken no ulterior steps. And how could any one, however great an offender, however well known to the world, be found in this place, which was not in the world? The idea seemed absurd. Then Mr Goulburn amused himself with his calculations about the wood. He was not in any danger from Antoine. A peasant and poacher of the rudest French type was not very likely to take in a man of the world; and he had no more intention of leaving the wood-cutting in Antoine’s hands than of doing it himself.