At last, after a thousand interminable detours, the cab suddenly stopped, moved slowly forward again amid shouts and insults, was then pushed this way and that, lifted from the ground, its equilibrium threatened by the trunks on its roof, and finally halted for good and all, as if anchored. "_Bon Dieu!_ What a crowd!" murmured La Crenmitz in terror. Felicia emerged from her torpor. "Where in heaven's name are we?" Beneath a colorless, smoky sky, with a fine network of rain drawn like gauze over the reality of things, lay a great square, filled with a human ocean flowing in from all the adjoining streets, immobilized around a lofty column which towered above that sea of heads like the gigantic mast of a sinking ship. Cavalry in troops, with drawn sabres, artillery in batteries lined the sides of an open pathway, a complete warlike host awaiting him who was soon to pass,--perhaps to try to rescue him, to carry him off by force from the redoubtable foe in whose power he was. Alas! cavalry charges, cannonades were of no avail. The prisoner was firmly bound, protected by a threefold wall of solid wood, of metal and of velvet, inaccessible to shot and shell, and not at the hands of those soldiers could he hope for deliverance. "Drive on. I do not wish to remain here," said Felicia frantically, pulling the driver's dripping cape, seized with a mad fear at the thought of the nightmare that pursued her, of what she could hear approaching with a ghastly rolling of drums, still distant but drawing nearer momentarily. But, at the first movement of the wheels, the shouts and hooting began anew. Thinking that they would allow him to cross the square, the driver had with great difficulty forced his way to the front rank of the crowd, which had closed in behind him and refused to allow him to turn back. It was impossible to advance or retreat She must remain there, endure those alcoholic breaths, those inquisitive glances, kindled in anticipation of an exceptionally fine spectacle, and eyeing with interest the fair traveller who was decamping "with such a pile o' trunks as that!" and a cur of that size to protect her. La Crenmitz was horribly frightened; Felicia, for her part, had but one thought, that he was about to pass, that she would be in the front rank to see him. Suddenly there was a loud shout: "Here he comes!" then a great silence fell upon the square, which had shaken off the burden of three weary hours of waiting. He was coming! Felicia's first impulse was to lower the curtain on her side, the side on which the procession was to pass. But, when she heard the drums close at hand, seized with a nervous frenzy at her inability to escape that obsession, or, it may be, infected by the unhealthy curiosity that encompassed her, she raised the curtain with a jerk, and her pale, ardent little face appeared, resting on both hands, at the window. "Very good! you will have it so; I am looking at you."