We soon found it, and passing into that hostile province, left behind us the fertile plains of beautiful Champagne. Our first halt was at Vaubecourt, on the left bank of the Aisne: it is a fief of the princes of Lillebonne, who are a branch of the house of Lorraine. Nicola gazed wistfully at the gilded spires of the quaint château, saying she had friends there, who would gladly receive her.
'But I promised to see you as far as Nanci?' said I, with a tone of disappointment and anxiety.
'True,' she replied, with tears in her eyes; and we rode on in silence and sadness, oppressed by our own thoughts; for we were now approaching the place and the day of our final separation.
My heart was perplexed by its mingled joy and sorrow. How delightful it was to be convinced of the entire love of this gentle creature, and hear her sweet and winning voice give me timid assurance of it again and again; but how bitter was the knowledge that a day was at hand when I should hear that voice and those assurances no more!
In her manner there was a soft tenderness which a lover alone could detect, and it filled me with delight. She had so fully avowed a reciprocity of regard that now I had nothing more to urge on that point; save, that we should not separate at Nanci—for to that parting I looked forward with a sincere and acute sorrow. I strove vainly to forget that it overhung me, and for a time to be happy; for when gazing upon Nicola, the delightful consciousness of proprietary in that charming form, and community of sentiment in her affectionate heart, filled me with exalted and joyous emotions.
This love for Nicola, which in me had sprung up so suddenly, strengthening with intimacy, and the length of our journey, was the first true passion of my heart, which hitherto had never known aught of an emotion so absorbing.
Never before had the thought of a woman—of a mere girl—come between me and the great desire of my soul—honour and fame in the French army; but now I thought only of Nicola, and of spending my life with her, and for her alone.
I strove to study, to estimate my real emotion for her, and the probable duration of it. Was this love misplaced? Reason said it was. Cold Reason! Yet I loved her, and love levels everything; but this passion ran full butt against a thousand old social (or anti-social) prejudices which had formed the leading principles, the life, the second religion as it were, of my family for centuries—never to wed one of a blood, or name, or race inferior to their own!
Nicola was but a waiting-woman—the soubrette of the French king's dissipated mistress—and yet I loved her with all the heedless ardour of a boy.
Rank and name, pride, prejudice, and pedigree, with all their old heraldic quarterings and mummery, what were they to me, but something to lay at the feet of this charming French girl when I said that I loved her?