Philibert rose, and fixing on his father a
gentle and melancholy look, left the room
without uttering a word. The deed was done;
brutality following up severity, had at one
stroke ruined the boy for ever. His admirable
mental organisation was crushed and broken,
like a chronometer beneath the blow of a
hammer, by the hand of the man appointed by
Providence to guide and encourage him along
the painful path of life.

Cries of hatred and rage uttered by his son
would not have produced half such an effect on
the unjust father as this extraordinary serenity
did. A good impulse, an access of real
parental love, seemed to be urging him to hasten
to embrace his child, and perhaps even to
entreat his pardon. The good thought vanished
quicker than the lightning's flash; and, if it
returned again, the time for repentance had
passed away.

Pliilibert, ever calm in appearance, went into
the court, where he found himself alone. For
one minute at the most, he appeared absorbed
in meditation; then, a strange shivering ran
through him from head to foot; and without
opening his lips, he darted into the garden,
climbed the wall, leaped down on the high road
to Vesoul, and disappeared for ever from the
eyes of his parent, at the very moment "when,
violently opening one of the windows of his
room, he cried, "Philibert, Philibert!"

Whether it was the appeal of a repentant
father, whether it was an order or an entreaty,
no one ever knew. On the very evening of his
son's departure, the schoolmaster, struck by
apoplexy, died without having near him a single
member of his family to close his eyes.

II.

The distance from Lure to Vesoul is twenty-
six kilometres, or about sixteen miles. At the
present day, when the locomotives choose to
take the trouble, these twenty-six kilometres
are traversed in as many minutes; and, as very
few travellers perform the journey on foot,
Vesoul is usually regarded as half an hour's
ride from Lure.

Poor Uncle Philibert, as soon as he had cleared
the garden wall and alighted on the high road, set
off running with such rapidity in the direction
of the chief town of the Upper Saône, that he
reached it in one heat of less than three hours.

Now and then, he halted for a second; and
then, as if he heard the hurried footsteps of
a troop of men pursuing him, resumed his
flight with redoubled swiftness. Not far from
Vesoul, two gendarmes who were travelling in
the same direction with the fugitive, surprised
to see a young man, almost a child, pass them at
the pace of a horse in full trot, spurred on their
horses to the same rate of speed; but Philibert,
already alarmed by sounds which existed only in
his own imagination, was still more terrified on
hearing the noise of the horses' hoofs and of the
sabres clanking against the riders' stirrups and
spurs. The gendarmes, puzzled by his precipitous
flight, increased their speed, that is, they
put their horses into full gallop.

Pursuers and pursued were soon within a
couple of hundred paces of each other, but
Vesoul was there, about the same distance in
front of Philibert as the gendarmes were behind
him. The proverb that fear gives wings, when
it does not completely annihilate the faculties,
was never more completely verified than it was
that day. Bounding with the agility of a roedeer
across the ditch to the right of the road, he
plunged, head foremost, into a hawthorn hedge,
which was too tall to be cleared by any other
creature than a bird. The gendarmes might
easily have leapt the ditch, but they were stopped
by the hedge through which the fugitive passed,
leaving shreds of clothing and bloody traces
behind him.

Five minutes after this exploit he threw himself
into his sister's arms, with just sufficient
strength to utter three words of despair, " Save
me, sister!" As at the gymnastic lesson he
fell into a deadly swoon. Eugénie rightly
guessed that some terrible event had happened.
The next morning, hoping to find her brother
sufficiently recovered to explain his sudden
appearance, she entered his room while he was still
asleep. He awoke, repeating as he had done the
day before, " Save me, sister!"

The reader will take but little interest in the
details of the young people's inheritance. The
school was given up to the head usher. Eugénie,
who had always manifested a desire to return to
her native town, easily obtained her husband's
consent to do so. The house at Vesoul was let,
and in April, 1812, the family party were
installed at Lure, in a charming property, at the
eastern extremity of the Grande Rue, completely
isolated from other dwellings, in the midst of a
vast extent of orchard and garden ground.
Three months' residence in this pleasant spot,
three months of absolute quiet, sufficed to restore
Uncle Philibert to his usual excellent bodily
health; but his mind had received too severe a
shock for Eugénie to be quite reassured by his
apparent calmness in proportion as his strength
was restored. He was not deranged; but the
name, the mere recollection, of his father,
constantly inspired him with the impulse to fly, and
at such moments Eugénie was obliged to exercise
the full charm of her voice, and her maternal
influence, in order to quiet him. Any unusual noise,
any one speaking in a harsh loud voice, caused
him to tremble from head to foot. On such
occasions he would seize the first object that came
to hand, and stand on guard against his
invisible enemy.

A joint journey to Italy, ostensibly to study
painting, but in reality with the hope of
completing his cure, was agreed upon; but they
had not reckoned on the terrible twenty-ninth
bulletin of the Grand Army, whose publication
filled all Paris with consternation.

Preparations for travelling were commenced
in December, 1812, when the news arrived of
the fearful disaster of the retreat from Russia.
France required fresh soldiers, for she was about