I looked back, and could see a party of about twenty gensd'armes advancing, but at a great distance, and their fixed bayonets flashed like stars in these misty caverns. The mob were in hundreds behind them, and the clatter of their feet and their cries rang with a thousand reverberations through the vast vacuity of these echoing catacombs. We could see them all distinctly; for though a quarter of a mile distant, the lamps burned brightly where they were passing.
"I have my sabre, and will confront these rascals," I exclaimed, becoming inflamed with sudden passion; "they dare not lay hands on me, as a British officer."
"Peste!" he replied, laughing; "I think you have seen whether they will or not. 'T is better not to trust them; a bayonet stab I do not mind, but think how unpleasant for a gentleman to be captured at the instance of a few rascally citizens. 'T will never do! We are not far now from the Val de Grace. This way, up the steps, and I will lead you to a secret doorway, near a nice little house that I know of, and where a pretty face will welcome us with smiles."
By the hand he conducted me up several flights of steps, along an excavated corridor, where the cold wind blew freely in my face, and from thence by a doorway, the exact locality of which seemed well known to him, ushered me into a dark and quiet street, in a part of Paris quite unknown to me.
"My friend, we are safe; that is the Val de Grace," said my frank captain, pointing to a large mass of building; "there is the Rue Marionette, and that large street still full of open shops, light, and people, is the Rue du Faubourg St. Jacques, which leads straight across the river. We can mingle with the crowd, and there all traces of us will be lost."
"Any way you please," I replied; "never having been in this part of Paris before, I am quite bewildered. Lead on, if you please; it is a dark place, this."
"The Russians have probably been passing this way. It is well known in Paris that these piggish Muscovites never return to their camp from a ball or café without drinking up the contents of every lamp within their reach; nor can all the alertness of the gend'armerie prevent them."
On gaining the main street of the faubourg, the blaze of the lighted shops, the long lines of lamps, the gaiety and bustle which were seen on every side, together with the free healthy breath of the upper air, were a pleasant exchange for the dark and silent caverns we had quitted, where breathing was almost impossible, and the mind was oppressed by the gloom of surrounding objects.