An hour elapsed, and he felt certain that the victim must have fallen into the deadly snare; but his anxiety to behold the completion of his plot would not permit him to delay an instant longer. Ordering a soldier of the guard to saddle his horse, he stuck his pistols into his girdle, drew his hat over his eyes, and muffling himself in his mantle, he rode forth,—feeling the exhilarating influence of a gallop in the breezy morning air infinitely agreeable, after a night of feverish excitement and drinking in his close chamber. As he approached the spot where he had placed the assassins in ambush, he hid his face in his mantle, and rode more slowly forward, with a beating heart, scanning the roadway in expectation of seeing the corse of his rival stretched upon it. But he looked in vain! The winding road between the thickets was clear, and appeared so for many a mile beyond. Enraged to a pitch of madness at the idea of his escape, he dashed the rowels into his horse and galloped on; when lo! two carbines flashed from adjacent thickets,—one on each side of the way. A sudden exclamation of rage and agony escaped from him; his horse reared up wildly, and pierced by a two-ounce bullet the worthy Count of Aranjuez and Colmenare de Orija, knight of Calatrava and the Stole, &c. &c. fell to the earth, and almost instantly expired. While Don Felix fell thus into his own snare, his more fortunate rival, with Donna Virginia, galloped along the bank of the Nive, pursuing the road to Cambo, where they arrived about sunrise, and sought without delay the house, or rather the cottage, of the village pastor. There fresh obstacles arose, as the reverend gentleman pretended to have many conscientious scruples about wedding a Catholic lady to a Briton and a heretic. But a few gold Napoleons overcame his qualms, and he consented to perform the important ceremony, with a description of which it is needless to tire the reader. Louis had no ordinary task to accomplish, in soothing the hesitation and terrors of Virginia, who was— "Crimsoned with shame, with terror mute, Dreading alike escape, pursuit; Till love, victorious o’er alarms, Hid fears and blushes in his arms."