"A convent!--how strange! What convent?" "That of the Sisters of Love and Our Lady of the Sparkling Eyes--an ancient foundation of royalty in the city." "I dare say; I never heard of it before;" and Lucille sank into profound silence. After a considerable interval, she asked, with a tremulousness she in vain tried to conceal-- "There were some friends who were to have arranged my departure from the place where you arrested me to-night--did you see them?" "Oh, yes; there was the atribilious Marquis de Secqville and the handsome Conte de Blassemare. St. Imay arrested them about half-an-hour ago; _they_ are gone to the Bastile." Lucille sighed profoundly. She did not observe that the farouche officer in the corner of the coach was shaking with suppressed laughter. After a time he ejaculated, in a sepulchral tone-- "I strongly suspect their punishment will be dreadful. It is bad enough to conspire to steal away the wife of a respectable curmudgeon, madame, but to draw one's sword on the king's police!--_ma foi_, madame, that is another affair. If his majesty's clemency be enlisted, notwithstanding, in their behoof, they may chance to get off with the galleys. It will be a dreadful sight to see that solemn De Secqville and that jovial Blassemare pulling one of those cursed long oars together, in red serge shirts, cursing Cupid and Monsieur Le Prun." Lucille shrunk back into the obscurity of her corner. The officer could not discern how his brusque communication had affected her; but, after a short silence, he burst into an unrestrained peal of laughter. This unseasonable insolence incensed his prisoner. She felt, however, that she was at his mercy, and commanded herself; but she could not avoid saying-- "If the calamities of other people afford you entertainment, monsieur, I can congratulate you upon possessing an inexhaustible fund of amusement in the discharge of your odious and melancholy office." "Amusement! entertainment!" he ejaculated, with another eclat of laughter, still more obstreperous. "I can't help laughing; but it is merely hysterical, on the faith of a gentleman. I laugh in proportion to my desolation. I could at this moment tear out my beard by handfuls through sheer despair. _Par exemple_, madame, _par exemple_!" And, with a frantic gesture and a roar of laughter, he literally tore off his huge moustache with both his hands, at a single pluck. "And my chevelure also, madame. See, here it goes--all for despair--hurra, hurra, hurrah! And my eyebrows--ay, they, too--pa ma foi--the eyebrows--there, presto--hurra, hurra!" He shook and roared with laughter as he made these successive sacrifices, and, shifting his seat, so that the moonlight fell full upon him, cried, panting from exhaustion-- "Does not madame know me?--is it possible? Here I am--cloak, cocked hat, wig, all gone--in the proper costume of madame's fortunate and adoring deliverer."