"Never, Helen, never!" exclaimed I, still holding her hand. "Stay yet one moment:--we are about to part for some months; promise me before I go, if you would make my absence from you endurable, that sooner or later you will be my wife!"
"No, Louis, no!" answered she, firmly, "that I will not promise; for I will never be your wife without the consent of your parents. But I will promise," she added, seeing that her refusal to accede to what I asked had pained my impatient spirit more than she expected, "I will vow, if you require it, never, never, to be the wife of another."
With these words she withdrew her hand, and left me, turning her steps towards the château; while I, delighted to find myself loved, yet vexed she would not promise more, darted away into the hills; and, as if to escape the pursuit of feelings which, though in some degree happy, were still too strong for endurance, I sprang from rock to rock after the izzards, with agility and daring little less than their own, making the crags ring with my carbine, till I could return home sufficiently successful in the chase to prevent any one supposing I had been otherwise employed.
CHAPTER VI.
We were very young to feel such passions as then throbbed within our bosoms, so strong, so keen, so durable; but our hearts had never known any other--they had not been hardened in the petrifying stream of time, nor had the world engraved so many lines upon the tablets of feeling as to render them unsusceptible of any deep and defined impression. Our whole hearts were open to love, and we loved with our whole hearts.
The two days of my stay soon drew to an end, and on the morning of the third, my horse, and that of Houssaye, together with a mule for Father Francis, were brought into the courtyard; and, after receiving my mother's counsel and my father's blessing, I mounted and rode forth with few of those pleasurable feelings which I had anticipated in setting out to explore foreign lands. But love was at that moment the predominant feeling in my bosom, and I would have resigned all, abandoned all, to have stayed and passed my life in tranquillity beside Helen.
It was not to be, and I went forth; but a sensation of swelling at my heart prevented me from either conversing with Father Francis, or noticing the beautiful country through which we travelled--a thing seldom lost to my eyes.
By the time we reached Pierrefitte, however, a distance of about ten miles, the successive passing of different objects, though each but called my attention in the very slightest degree, upon the whole, began to draw my mind from itself; and when proceeding onward we wound our horses through the narrow gorge leading towards Luz, the magnificent scenery of the pass, with its enormous rocks, its luxuriant woods, and its rushing river, stole from me my feelings of regret, and left me nothing but admiration of the grand and beautiful works which nature had spread around. By this time the day had somewhat waned, for we were obliged to conform our horses' pace to the humour of Father Francis' mule, which was not the most vivacious of animals. The sun had got beyond the high mountains on our right, which, now robed in one vast pall of purple shadow, rose like Titans against the sky, and seemed to cover at least one third of its extent; but the western hills still caught the rays, and kept glowing with a thousand varied hues as we went along, like the quick changes of hope as man advances along the tortuous and varied path of existence.
Amongst other objects on which the sunshine still caught, was a little woody mound projecting from the surface of the hill, and crowned with an old round tower beginning to fall into ruins. As we passed it, the good priest, who never loved to see me in any of those fits of gloom which sometimes fell upon me--the natural placidity of his disposition leading him to miscomprehend the variability of mine--pointed out to me the mound and the crumbling tower as the spot where a great victory had been gained over the Moors, in times long gone; and our conversation gradually turned to war and deeds of renown: but Father Francis had abjured the sword, and little appreciated the word glory.
"Glory, my dear Louis," said he, "according to the world's acceptation of the word, is, I am afraid, little better in general than the gilding with which mighty robbers cover over great crimes. When I was young, however, I thought like you, and I am afraid all young men will think so, till reason teaches them that the only true glory which man can have, is to be found in the love of his fellow-creatures, not in their fears. All other glory is but emptiness. You remember the Italian poet's lines on the field of Cannæ.