CHAPTER I. THE SON OF GILBERT. CHAPTER II. ANGE PITOU. CHAPTER III. A REVOLUTIONARY FARMER. CHAPTER IV. LONG LEGS ARE GOOD FOR RUNNING, IF NOT FOR DANCING. CHAPTER V. WHY THE POLICE AGENT CAME WITH THE CONSTABLES. CHAPTER VI. ON THE ROAD. CHAPTER VII. THE FIRST BLOOD. CHAPTER VIII. PITOU DISCOVERS HE IS BRAVE. CHAPTER IX. "TO THE BASTILE!" CHAPTER X. BLOWING HOT AND COLD. CHAPTER XI. THE PRISON GOVERNOR. CHAPTER XII. STORMING THE BASTILE. CHAPTER XIII. DOWN IN THE DUNGEONS. CHAPTER XIV. THE TRIANGLE OF LIBERTY. CHAPTER XV. THE YOUNG VISIONARY. CHAPTER XVI. THE PHYSICIAN FOR THE STATE. CHAPTER XVII. THE COUNTESS OF CHARNY. CHAPTER XVIII. THE QUEEN AT BAY. CHAPTER XIX. THE QUEEN'S FAVOURITE. CHAPTER XX. THE TRIO OF LOVE. CHAPTER XXI. THE QUEEN AND HER MASTER. CHAPTER XXII. THE PRIVATE COUNCIL. CHAPTER XXIII. WHY THE QUEEN WAITED. CHAPTER XXIV. THE ARMY OF WOMEN. CHAPTER XXV. THE NIGHT OF HORRORS. CHAPTER XXVI. BILLET'S SORROW.
It was a winter night, and the ground around Paris was covered with snow, although the flakes had ceased to fall since some hours.
Spite of the cold and the darkness, a young man, wrapped in a mantle so voluminous as to hide a babe in his arms, strode over the white fields out of the town of Villers Cotterets, in the woods, eighteen leagues from the capital, which he had reached by the stage-coach, towards a hamlet called Haramont. His assured step seemed to indicate that he had previously gone this road.
Soon above him streaked the leafless boughs upon the grey sky. The sharp air, the odor of the oaks, the icicles and beads on the tips of branches, all appealed to the poetry in the wanderer.
Through the clumps he looked for the village spire and the blue smoke of the chimneys, filtering from the cottages through the natural trellis of the limbs.
It was dawn when he crossed a brook, bordered with yellow cress and frozen vines, and at the first hovel asked for the laborer's boy to take him to Madeline Pitou's home.
Mute and attentive, not so dull as most of their kind, the children sprang up and staring at the stranger, led him by the hand to a rather large and good-looking cottage, on the bank of the rivulet running by most of the dwellings.
"There," said one of the guides nodding his head towards it.