Alas, alas, it must be said, he felt that he loved Clémence de Marly. Notwithstanding all he had seen, notwithstanding all he had condemned, notwithstanding the fear that she could not make him happy even if he could obtain her, the belief that it would be impossible to win her, and the conviction that she loved another--alas, he felt, and felt bitterly, that at length, indeed, he loved, and loved with the whole energy of his nature. He reproached himself with weakness; he accused himself of the follies that he had so often condemned in others. Was it her mere beauty that he loved? he asked himself. Was it the mere perfection of form and colour that, in a few short years, would fleet with fleeting seasons, and give place to irremediable decay? Was he, who had believed that loveliness could have no effect on him, was he caught by the painted glittering of a mere beautiful statue? No; he felt there was something more. He felt that she had given him sufficient insight into her original nature to show him that, though spoiled by after circumstances, she had been made by the hand of God that which he had always believed he could love, that bright being where the beautiful form, and the beautiful heart, and the beautiful mind were all attuned together in one grand and comprehensive harmony of nature. He felt that such was the case, and his sensations were only the bitterer that it should be so.
He had thus paused and meditated some little time full of his own thoughts and nothing else, when a hand was suddenly laid upon his shoulder, and, turning round, he saw his friend the Chevalier.
"Why, Albert," he said, "in what melancholy guise are you here meditating? I met Clémence upon the stairs just now, and she told me that I should find you here, tasting the morning air upon the ramparts. I expected to see you with your eye roving enchanted over this fine scene, looking as usual halfway between a mad poet and a mad painter; and lo! instead of that, here you are planted upon the rampart like a dragoon officer in garrison in a dull Dutch town, with your heel beating melancholy time on the pavement, and your eyes profoundly cast into the town ditch. In the name of Heaven, why did you not make Clémence come on to enliven you?"
The Count smiled with a somewhat bitter smile. "It would have hardly been necessary, and hardly right to try," he replied; "but you miscalculate my power, D'Evran. The lady left me with an intelligible hint, not only that she was not about to follow me, but that I was not to follow her."
"What, saucy with you, too!" cried the Chevalier laughing. "I did not think that she would have had determination enough for that."
"Nay, nay, you are mistaken, Louis," replied the Count; "not in the least saucy, as you term it, but quite mistress of herself, of course, to do as she pleased."
"And yet, Albert," said the Chevalier, "and yet I do believe that there is not a man in France with whom she would so willingly have walked through these gardens as with yourself. Nay, do not be foolish or blind, Albert. I heard her saying to Marsillac but yesterday, when he called to take his leave, that she had seen at Poitiers more than she had ever seen in her life before, a courtier who was not a fool, a soldier who was not a libertine, and a man of nearly thirty who had some good feelings left."
The Count gazed steadfastly into the Chevalier's face for a moment, as if he would have read into his very soul, and then replied, "Come, Louis, let us go back. If she meant me, she was pleased to be complimentary, and had probably quarrelled with her real lover, and knew that he was in hearing."
The Chevalier gave himself a turn round upon his heel, without reply, sang a bar or two of a gay air, at that time fashionable in Paris, and then walked back to the governor's house with the Count, who, from every thing he had seen and heard, but the more firmly determined to hasten his steps from Poitiers as fast as possible.
The hour of breakfast had not yet arrived when they entered the house, and the Count turned to his own apartments, seeking to remain in solitude for a few minutes, not in order to indulge in thoughts and reflections which he felt to be unnerving, but to make a vigorous effort to recover all his composure, and pass the rest of the two or three days which he had to remain as if nothing had given any disturbance to the usual tranquil course of his feelings. In the ante-room, however, he found Maître Jerome, sitting watching the door, like a cat before the hole of a mouse; and the moment he entered Jerome sprang up, saying,--