Marie, as she next day rode across the mountains, was wild with joy. The fresh breezes of the uplands, and the rapturous thought of approaching freedom, filled her with transport. She teased her steed to perform a thousand gambols, she sung in emulation of the birds by the way-side, she squandered a thousand malicious kind looks upon the lout by her side, she had a good word and a gift for every menial in the train, Her delicate figure, flashing eyes, and graceful wildness, kept all eyes fixed upon her with love and wonder. Next day the party embarked upon the Loire, but the first intoxication of joy was over. The equable motion of the boat, the gentle rippling of the waves, the heat of the day, the deep shades beneath which they occasionally passed, relaxed her frame. A band of music which the marquis had engaged at Lyons, aided, by its soft plaintive melodies, to give a melancholy character to her reflections. She thought of her indiscretion, of the toils from which she was not yet free, of the slanders and calumnies to which she might be exposed. The careless innocence of a young woman may lead her into conduct, to look upon which impresses her with a tormenting consciousness of sullied purity, although not one criminal thought has ruffled her white mind. It was thus with Marie. Lost in self-reproach, she bowed her head over the gunwale of the boat, and played in the water with her fingers, while a big tear gathered beneath each jetty eyelash. Her ugly companion sat beside her, gazing upon the fair mourner with a nauseous expression of affection and confidence. The change of her mood since yesterday, was too palpable to escape even his gross apprehension. But he attributed it with great complacency to the waywardness of love, believing himself to be the object. His attachment to Marie was a strange mixture of avarice, gratified vanity, and admiration of her beauty. Let us hasten to the close of our story. It was mid-day, and the crowds which had thronged the market-place of Juvizy were dispersing, when a knight, armed at all points, his vizor up, rode into the great square, followed by eighty men-at-arms. He sat on his strong black horse like an upright pillar of iron. His look was sedate, but frank and careless, as of one whose blood flowed as calmly, and whose thoughts were as clear amid the thunder of the fight as in the retirement of his own chamber. There was a universal expression of love and reverence, for every peasant knew Vieilleville. His troop drew up in a wide street which abutted on the market-place, at one end of the town-house.