 perceived by any person in the family, he began to rave
and foam at the mouth with rage and jealousy, and in the fury of distraction,
accused the landlady of being an accomplice in her escape, threatening to
complain of her to the commissaire. The woman could not conceive how Mrs.
Hornbeck, who she knew was an utter stranger to the French language, and kept no
sort of company, could elude the caution of her husband, and find any refuge in
a place where she had no acquaintance, and began to suspect the lodger's emotion
was no other than an affected passion to conceal his own practices upon his
wife, who had perhaps fallen a sacrifice to his jealous disposition. She
therefore spared him the trouble of putting his menaces in execution, by going
to the magistrate without any further deliberation, and giving an account of
what she knew concerning this mysterious affair, with certain insinuations
against Hornbeck's character, which she represented as peevish and capricious to
the last degree.
    While she thus anticipated the purpose of the plaintiff, her information was
interrupted by the arrival of the party himself, who exhibited his complaint
with such evident marks of perturbation, anger and impatience, that the
commissaire could easily perceive that he had no share in the disappearance of
his wife; and directed him to the lieutenant de police, whose province it is to
take cognizance of such occurrences. This gentleman, who presides over the city
of Paris, having heard the particulars of Hornbeck's misfortune, asked if he
suspected any individual person as the seducer of his yoke-fellow; and when he
mentioned Peregrine as the object of his suspicion, granted a warrant and a
detachment of soldiers, to search for and retrieve the fugitive.
    The husband conducted them immediately to the academy where our hero lodged,
and having rummaged the whole place, to the astonishment of Mr. Jolter, without
finding either his wife or the supposed ravisher, accompanied them to all the
public houses in the Fauxbourg; which having examined also without success, he
returned to the magistrate in a state of despair, and obtained a promise of his
making such an effectual inquiry, that in three days he should have an account
of her, provided she was alive, and within the walls of Paris.
    Our adventurer, who had foreseen all this disturbance, was not at all
surprized when his governor told him what had happened; and being conjured to
restore the woman to the right owner, with many pathetic remonstrances touching
the heinous sin of adultery, the distraction of the unfortunate husband, and the
danger of incurring the resentment of an arbitrary
