His heart throbbed with intense gratitude to Weber.

Without him escape would have been impossible.

He would make his way to the French.
He would find Lannes and together in some way they would rescue Julie, Julie so young and so beautiful, held in the castle of the medieval baron.

In the lowering shadows the house became a castle and Auersperg had always been of the Middle Ages.
The wind freshened and a few drops of rain struck his face.

He stood boldly erect now, unafraid of observation, and picked a way through the mass of broken glass and overturned shrubbery toward the end of the conservatory, seeing beyond it a gleam of water which must be the big fishpond.
He turned to the left and reached the edge of the pond just as four figures stepped from the dusk, their raised rifles pointing at him.