The other letter was to the Count himself, and, whatever it contained, there is plentiful record, in the family history of the Counts de Rollincourt, to show that it accomplished its purpose. By the time the aunt of Mlle. de Sarton reached the newly bought estate of the Count de Rollincourt, in mad search of her fugitive niece, servants were in waiting at the road to conduct her to the chateau, where her amazement to find the Count in possession was promptly doubled on seeing Collette installed as mistress,--for, if the Count's little surprise was spoiled, his plan of having the Abbe Foyard perform an impromptu marriage was carried out, after all. Meanwhile, long before this happy issue of affairs, Dick Wetheral had roused the cowed postilion and set out on horseback towards Paris, leaving the carriage to be taken back when the postilion should return. Dismissing this postilion at the first post, he took new horses, and, riding all day, despite weather and bad roads, he arrived at evening at St. Denis, and dismounted at the principal inn,--tired, hungry, and bespattered with mud. Before going to bed, he sent for a servant to give his clothes a thorough cleaning, that he might in the morning make his triumphal entry into Paris in a state of attire befitting so important an event. When his head rested on the pillow, it was with a pleasant thrill at the realization that his road, roundabout as it had been, had indeed led him to the very portals of Paris, and that it would take him across those portals on the early morrow. He little knew in what manner he was to cross those portals, how he was to pass through the city yet see it not, and what a vast loop his road was to describe, over strange perils and through wild heart-burnings, ere it should land him in Paris with free feet and open eyes. CHAPTER XVI. PASTORAL AND TRAGEDY. The morrow, March 2d, was Sunday, and with it came a change to soft and sunny weather. As Dick soon learned, this was a day to bring Parisians out into the fields; a day on which the people would go to church and then to pleasure, in their gayest clothes; a day on which a stranger entering Paris in Dick's circumstances would be out of harmony with the general picture. Moreover, gladdened by the unexpected foretaste of spring, St. Denis itself looked charming. Therefore, Dick decided to postpone the long-anticipated entrance till Monday. He went in the morning to the famous abbey church where the kings of France were buried; and after that he walked to the banks of the Seine, whose waters sparkled in the sunlight or flowed green beneath the trees along the edge. Doing as he saw some others do, Dick hired a boat, with a boatman, and started to row up the Seine,--that is to say, southward, towards St. Ouen and the more immediate environs of Paris.