The incident of the pistol disturbed me for a while. I made a score of speculations as to why a fat priest should burden himself with such an article, and finally concluded that it was as he suggested, to defend himself from night birds if danger offered; though that at the time had been the last thing I myself would have looked for in the well-ordered town of Versailles. I sat in the common-room or _salle_ of the inn for a while after he had gone, and thereafter retired to my own bedchamber, meaning to read or write for an hour or two before going to bed. In the priest's room--which was on the same landing and next to my own--I heard the whistle of Bernard the Swiss, but I had no letters for him that evening, and we did not meet each other. I was at first uncommon dull, feeling more than usually the hame-wae that must have been greatly wanting in the experience of my Uncle Andrew to make him for so long a wanderer on the face of the earth. But there is no condition of life so miserable but what one finds in it remissions, diversions, nay, and delights also, and soon I was--of all things in the world to be doing when what followed came to pass!--inditing a song to a lady, my quill scratching across the paper in spurts and dashes, and baffled pauses where the matter would not attend close enough on the mood, stopping altogether at a stanza's end to hum the stuff over to myself with great satisfaction. I was, as I say, in the midst of this; the Swiss had gone downstairs; all in my part of the house was still, though vehicles moved about in the courtyard, when unusually noisy footsteps sounded on the stair, with what seemed like the tap of scabbards on the treads. It was a sound so strange that my hand flew by instinct to the small sword I was now in the habit of wearing and had learned some of the use of from Thurot. There was no knock for entrance; the door was boldly opened and four officers with Buhot at their head were immediately in the room. Buhot intimated in French that I was to consider myself under arrest, and repeated the same in indifferent English that there might be no mistake about a fact as patent as that the sword was in his hand. For a moment I thought the consequence of my crime had followed me abroad, and that this squat, dark officer, watching me with the scrutiny of a forest animal, partly in a dread that my superior bulk should endanger himself, was in league with the law of my own country. That I should after all be dragged back in chains to a Scots gallows was a prospect unendurable; I put up the ridiculous small sword and dared him to lay a hand on me. But I had no sooner done so than its folly was apparent, and I laid the weapon down.