26 AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF FRANCIS ARAGO. 
“ We must follow the high road, and we shall meet with 
them.” Others maintained that they must get into the 
wood on the left. The barking of the dogs, by which 
these individuals were accompanied, added to the tumult. 
During this time we pursued our way silently, more 
dead than alive. It was two o’clock in the morning. 
All at once we saw a faint light in a solitary house; it ° 
was like a light-house for the mariner in the midst of the 
tempest, and the only means of safety which remained 
to us. Arrived at the door of the farm, we knocked and 
asked for hospitality. The inmates, very little reassured, 
feared that we were thieves, and did not hurry themselves 
to open to us. 
Impatient at the delay, I cried out, as I had received 
authority to do so, “In the name of the King, open to 
us!” They obeyed an order thus given; we entered 
pell-mell, and in the greatest haste, men and mules, into 
the kitchen, which was on the ground-floor; and we hur- 
ried to extinguish the lights, in order not to awaken the 
suspicions of the bandits who were seeking for us. In- 
deed, we heard them, passing and repassing near the 
house, vociferating with the whole force of their lungs 
against their unlucky fate. We did not quit this solitary 
house until broad day, and we continued our route for 
Tortosa, not without having given a suitable recompense 
to our hosts. I wished to know by what providential 
circumstance they happened to have a lamp burning at 
that unseasonable hour. “We had killed a pig,” they 
told me, “in the course of the day, and we were busy 
preparing the black puddings.” Had the pig lived one 
day more, or had there been no black puddings, I should 
certainly have been no longer in this world, and I should 
not have the opportunity to relate the story of the robbers 
of Oropeza. 
