Through the window I could see some men climbing over the wall and getting down into the garden.

We had just sufficient time to escape by a back staircase which led to a door, through which we passed, shutting it behind us.

We found ourselves on a road, at the other side of which was a vineyard.

We crossed the road and crept under the vines, which completely concealed us.
"As we learned later, the captain's house had been denounced as a Bonapartist nest, and the assassins had hoped to take it by surprise; and, indeed, if they had come a little sooner we had been lost, for before we had been five minutes in our hiding-place the murderers rushed out on the road, looking for us in every direction, without the slightest suspicion that we were not six yards distant.

Though they did not see us I could see them, and I held my pistols ready cocked, quite determined to kill the first who came near.