“You are right, Lieutenant,” said a dragoon, who lay bleeding from a dreadful cut in the forehead; “I'd not exchange places with him myself this minute for all his epaulettes.” With an overwhelming sense of my own degraded position, when to such taunts as these I dared not reply, I stood mute and confounded. Meantime the soldiers were engaged in collecting together the scattered weapons, fastening the wrists of the prisoners with cords, and ransacking the house for such proofs of the conspiracy as might criminate others at a distance. By the time these operations were concluded, the day began to break, and I could distinguish in the courtyard several large covered carts or charrettes destined to convey the prisoners. One of these was given up entirely to the chief, who, although only slightly wounded, would never assist himself in the least, but lay a heavy, inert mass, suffering the others to lift him and place him in the cart. Such as were too badly wounded to be moved were placed in a room in the château, a guard being left over them. A sergeant of the _gendarmerie_ now approached me as I stood, and commenced, without a word, to examine me for any papers or documents that might be concealed about my person. “You are in error,” said I, quietly. “I have nothing of what you suspect.” “Do you call this nothing?” interrupted he, triumphantly, as he drew forth the parchment commission I had placed in my bosom, and forgot to restore to De Beauvais. “_Parbleu!_ you'd have had a better memory had your plans succeeded.” “Give it here,” said an officer, as he saw the sergeant devouring the document with his eyes. “Ah!” cried he, starting, “he was playing a high stake, too. Let him be closely secured.” While the orders of the officer were being followed up, the various prisoners were secured in the carts, mounted dragoons stationed at either side, their carbines held unslung in their hands. At last my turn came, and I was ordered to mount into a _charrette_ with two gendarmes, whose orders respecting any effort at escape on my part were pretty clearly indicated by the position of two pistols carried at either side of me. A day of heavy, unremitting rain, without any wind or storm, succeeded to the night of tempest. Dark inky clouds lay motionless near the earth, whose surface became blacker by the shadow. A weighty and lowering atmosphere added to the gloom I felt, and neither in my heart within nor in the world without could I find one solitary consolation.