END OF THE SECOND VOLUME.
VOLUME THE THIRD.
CHAPTER I.
The Count d'Auvergne left Agnes de Meranie, with his mind stretched to the highest point of excitement. For months and months he had been dwelling on the thoughts of that one moment. In the midst of other scenes and circumstances, his soul had been abstracted and busy with the anticipations of that hour. His whole powers and energies had been wrought up to bear it firmly and calmly. And now he had accomplished his task. It was done! he had seen, he had met the object of his young, deep, all-absorbing affection--the object of all his regrets, the undesigning cause of all his misery--he had seen her the wife of another--he had seen her in sorrow and distress--he had helped even to tear her heart, by pressing on her a separation from the man she loved. He had marked every touch of her strong affection for Philip. He had felt every cold and chilling word she had addressed to himself, and yet he had borne it calmly--firmly, at least. Like the Indian savage, he had endured the fire and the torture without a sign of suffering; but still the fire and the torture had done their work upon his corporeal frame.
The words in the letter, presented to him by De Coucy's page, swam dizzily before his eyes, without conveying their defined meaning to his senses. He saw that it was some new pang--he saw that it was some fresh misfortune; but reason reeled upon her throne, and he could not sufficiently fix his mind to gather what was the precise nature of the tidings he received. He bade the page follow, however, in a hurried and confused tone, and passed rapidly on through the castle hall into the town, and to the lodging where he had left his retainers. His horse stood saddled in the court, and all seemed prepared for departure; and without well knowing why, but with the mere indistinct desire of flying from the sorrows that pursued him, he mounted his horse and turned him to the road.
"Shall we follow, my lord?" demanded his squire, running at his bridle as he rode forward.
"Ha?--Yes!--Follow!" replied the count, and galloped on with the letter the page had given him still in his hand. He rode on with the swiftness of the wind; whenever his horse made the least pause, urging him forward with the spur, as if a moment's cessation of his rapid pace gave him up again to the dark and gloomy thoughts that pursued him like fierce and winged fiends.
Still, his long habit of commanding his feelings struggled for its ancient power. He felt that his mind was overcome, and he strove to raise it up again. He endeavoured to recall his stoical firmness; he tried to reason upon his own weakness; but the object to which he had bent all his thoughts was accomplished--the motive for his endurance was over, his firmness was gone, and reason hovered vaguely round each subject that was presented to her, without grasping it decidedly. During the last two years, he had raised up, as it were, a strong embankment in his own mind against the flood of his sorrows, he had fortified it with every power of a firm and vigorous intellect; but the torrent had swelled by degrees, till its force became resistless; and now it bore away every barrier, with destruction the more fearful from the opposition it had encountered.