CHAPTER XXXVIII THE DRUMS OF WAR
Oh, caprice of a woman! To leave me like that in a moment of anger and jealousy, never to wait an explanation; to let fall what might be the curtain of eternal separation with a touch of her hand; to step away from me and vanish into that vast, vague, cruel land we call the world!
And I had held her so close to me! She was so entirely mine, the happiest dream that ever mortal dreamt, the most mysterious and beautiful.
She had taken the carriage which we left at the inn at Etiolles, and returned to Paris. That we discovered; but beyond that there was no word or sign to lead me.
I only knew that she was in Paris. Even of that I was not quite sure, for she may have used Paris only as a stage on her journey into the unknown.
But to Paris I came. I could not stay at Etiolles, even on the chance of her returning. I must go where she had gone. And I swore in my madness to find her, even though I searched Paris from the heights of Montmartre to the depths of the Seine.
And then, when I got to Paris, I found my hands idle and useless. I did not know, even, what name she had gone under during her metamorphosis. She who had no name—this ghost from the past!
At times I found myself wondering whether it was all a dream, an illusion of the brain. Whether I was mad. But actuality brought me to reason on this point. I had to answer the inquiries following the death of De Coigny. I had to appear before an examining magistrate, I and my seconds.
Felix Rebouton was the magistrate in question, the same who, if my memory serves me, conducted the inquiry on the death of Victor Noir.