"I cannot tell very much of Pierre Germain's journey to Paris. He himself used to say he did not, in after years, recall it very clearly; later events and anxieties made it grow vague and cloudy. But nothing of very great importance occurred. As he had himself said, he was not a figure in any way conspicuous, or likely to draw much attention. A fine, sturdy young fellow of seventeen or eighteen, his little bundle slung over his shoulder, making his way along the country roads, whistling as he went, or now and then mounted on the top of the public coach ready for a little conversation, or to give a helping hand with the horses if he were wanted--he had not the appearance of a dangerous person. Nor would any one have suspected the intense anxiety he learned so well to hide, the burning eagerness to get to the end of his journey which possessed him. All the information he could pick up, without seeming too much interested in doing so, he tried to acquire. And the nearer he approached the capital the greater seemed the half-suppressed excitement, the stranger became the looks and tones of many of the people he came across; while all through his journey he met the sight of burnt and ruined chateaux, of convents deserted by their inmates and pillaged by the neighbouring townspeople or villagers, of farms where no longer the cheerful sounds of labour were to be heard--and everywhere misery and reckless disorder. "He had no difficulty in entering the great city. "In those days it was much easier to get into Paris than, once there, to get out again. The bundle which he carried was carelessly glanced at by the official at the barriers, who asked him mockingly if he had come to make his fortune in Paris, taking him for a country lad attracted, like hundreds of others, by the accounts of the lawlessness and licence of the `rule of the mob,' and Pierre laughed back a mocking reply. He did not yet, not till he had made his way through what seemed to him innumerable streets, dare to ask for the Rue de Lille, so fearful was he of attracting attention by seeming to have any errand about which he might be questioned. But at last, feeling hungry and tired, he ventured into a milk shop, where a meek, rather frightened-looking woman, with a little child in her arms, was standing behind the counter. "`Madame,' he was beginning, but the woman quickly interrupted him: `Citizeness, you mean, boy,' she said. `Whence do you come to use a word we never hear now?' and on his hastily begging her pardon, `it is not for me; it matters nothing to me. It is for yourself, citizen,' she added. `You must watch your words, and indeed by your looks it were better for you to go back whence you came.' "Pierre felt startled. `By my looks, citizeness,' he said. `I look what I am--a country lad come to see Paris for the first time.'