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At first he owned he was not without some degree of uncertainty and apprehension. As he advanced, however, the whole population declared themselves enthusiastically in his favour: but he saw no soldiers. It was not till he arrived between Mure and Vizille, within five or six leagues from Grenoble, and on the fifth day after his landing, that he met a battalion.

In Muré I encountered another Frenchman, Count André de Saint Phall, who was making a journey of recreation across Hindostan. During the whole course, which we made together, to Bombay, the young count demonstrated a touching solicitude for me, and sympathy for the excruciating pain I suffered from my broken leg and the fever induced by its torture.

I abandoned hope of unearthing the top-hatted antiquarian and had indeed concluded him to be a myth, when a friend supplied me with what may be absurdly familiar to less bookish people: "The Nooks and By-ways of Italy." By Craufurd Tait Ramage, LL.D. Liverpool, 1868. A glance sufficed to prove that this Ramage belonged to the brotherhood of David Urquhart, Mure of Caldwell, and the rest of them.

It was but eleven years before the first great movement of the Risorgimento swept over Italy in 1848 that he passed away; his poems were indeed songs before sunrise, a sunrise of which he failed to detect the far-off glimmering, so that he could only lament without hope the sad condition of his dismembered country, once the mistress and now the play-thing of the world, and the abject slave of hated Austria: “O patria mia, vedo le mure e gli archi E le colonne e i simulacri e l’ erme Torri degli avi nostri, Ma la gloria non vedo; Non vedo il lauro e’l ferro ond’ eran carchi I nostri padri antichi.”

It was between Mure and Vizele that Cambronne, who commanded his advanced guard of forty grenadiers, met suddenly a battalion sent forwards from Grenoble to arrest the march. The colonel refused to parley with Cambronne; either party halted until Napoleon himself came up. He did not hesitate for a moment.

Five minutes for it to get really hot, as Annette had made some the previous day for her father who had been on a tiring errand up to La Mure and had come home cold and starved and it was specially good all the better for having been hotted up once or twice and the cloves and nutmeg having soaked in for nearly four and twenty hours.

"His excellence," says MURE, "appears to have lain in his descriptive powers. Calm sleep the mountain tops and shady vales, The rugged cliffs and hollow glens; The wild beasts slumber in their dens, The cattle on the hill. Deep in the sea The countless finny race and monster brood Tranquil repose. Even the busy bee Forgets her daily toil.

At first he owned he was not without some degree of uncertainty and apprehension. As he advanced, however, the whole population declared themselves enthusiastically in his favour: but he saw no soldiers. It was not till he arrived between Mure and Vizille, within five or six leagues from Grenoble, and on the fifth day after his landing, that he met a battalion.

Abandoning the tonga, I hired saddle horses not without considerable difficulty and evening had arrived when we started to descend from Muré, which is at an altitude of 5,000 feet. This stage of our journey had nothing playful in it. The road was torn in deep ruts by the late rains, darkness came upon us and our horses rather guessed than saw their way.

A good appetite made my simple meal relish better than the magnificent cheer which I have lately partaken of. I smoked a cigar, slept away an hour, and read Mure of Auchendrane's trial, and thus ended the day. I cannot afford to spend many such, nor would they seem so pleasant. Will Laidlaw came to dinner, of which we partook at three o'clock.