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I APPEAR IN A MANNER BECOMING MY NAME AND LINEAGE.
Fortune smiling at parting upon Monsieur de Balibari, enabled him to win a handsome sum with his faro-bank.
At ten o'clock the next morning, the carriage of the Chevalier de Balibari drew up as usual at the door of his hotel; and the Chevalier, who was at his window, seeing the chariot arrive, came down the stairs in his usual stately manner.
'Where is my rascal Ambrose ?' said he, looking around and not finding his servant to open the door.
'I will let down the steps for your honour,' said a gendarme, who was standing by the carriage; and no sooner had the Chevalier entered, than the officer jumped in after him, another mounted the box by the coachman, and the latter began to drive.
'Good gracious!' said the Chevalier, 'what is this ?' 'You are going to drive to the frontier,' said the gendarme, touching his hat.
'It is shameful--infamous! I insist upon being put down at the Austrian Ambassador's house!' 'I have orders to gag your honour if you cry out,' said the gendarme.
'All Europe shall hear of this!' said the Chevalier, in a fury.
'As you please,' answered the officer, and then both relapsed into silence.
The silence was not broken between Berlin and Potsdam, through which place the Chevalier passed as His Majesty was reviewing his guards there, and the regiments of Bulow, Zitwitz, and Henkel de Donnersmark.
As the Chevalier passed His Majesty, the King raised his hat and said, 'Qu'il ne descende pas: je lui souhaite un bon voyage.' The Chevalier de Balibari acknowledged this courtesy by a profound bow.
They had not got far beyond Potsdam, when boom! the alarm cannon began to roar.
'It is a deserter,' said the officer.
'Is it possible ?' said the Chevalier, and sank back into his carriage again.
Hearing the sound of the guns, the common people came out along the road with fowling-pieces and pitchforks, in hopes to catch the truant.

The gendarmes seemed very anxious to be on the look-out for him too.

The price of a deserter was fifty crowns to those who brought him in.
'Confess, sir,' said the Chevalier to the police officer in the carriage with him, 'that you long to be rid of me, from whom you can get nothing, and to be on the look-out for the deserter who may bring you in fifty crowns?
Why not tell the postilion to push on?
You may land me at the frontier and get back to your hunt all the sooner.' The officer told the postillion to get on; but the way seemed intolerably long to the Chevalier.

Once or twice he thought he heard the noise of horse galloping behind: his own horses did not seem to go two miles an hour; but they DID go.