"My first thought was of Coeurdefer, whom I knew to be the possessor of such weapons, which he had brought from Venice, where they are commonly used by the bravoes; but the proofs I could adduce were too slight for me, a stranger and a foreigner, to accuse the son of a powerful baronial family; thus the terrible suspicion remained locked in my own breast—a suspicion that grew less, however, when I remembered that the victor, like a common footpad, had taken the purse and locket of my poor friend.
"The grief of a kind, warm-hearted, and affectionate girl like Annette may be imagined. She wept little, but her sorrow was the deeper that it was unrelieved by any external manifestations. She was long inconsolable.
"Now came the war consequent to the League formed at Vienna, in 1757, to strip the King of Prussia of his dominions, and an alliance was formed by France, Austria, Russia, and Sweden, when Britain declared war against the former, and all Europe seemed to 'go by the ears' at once.
"The old Marquis de Chateaunoir marched as Colonel of Horse under the Maréchal d'Estrées, and fell at the passage of the Rhine. His son, the Vicomte Henri, became a soldier, too, and soon obtained the command of the Mousquetaires Gris, into which I, then a fugitive from the Scottish Highlands, was admitted by his request; but long before all this poor little Annette had become a canoness of Remiremont.
"This ecclesiastical establishment, by the peculiarity of its constitution, is one of the most singular in the church. It was founded by St. Romerick, a famous abbot, who lived in the days of Clotaire II., and who built his first convent on what was then a bare and desolate place, at the foot of Mount Vosge. All the ladies in it, the abbess excepted, take certain vows, reserving to themselves the right of quitting the convent and marrying if they please; and all must prove their nobility by four descents before admission. The abbess had both spiritual and temporal power under the Pope and Dukes of Lorraine.
"Annette was a canoness for three years, and lived in peace, viewing the world only as a place wherein to practise those little acts of kindness and Christian charity which the ladies of St. Romerick practised so freely as to make their establishment a boon and a blessing to that sequestered little city among the mountains. There her virtues, her attention to the sick, and her charity to the poor, excited the admiration of all, as her sorrowful story, and sad, grave manner won their sympathy. So three years glided away, until in an evil hour Jules de Coeurdefer came to visit his sister, who was the superior of this remarkable establishment.
"He saw Annette unveiled in the garden; her pale beauty, her exceeding gentleness, and her loneliness raised a passion in his breast. Impetuous in all things, he at once besought his sister to intercede for him with Annette; and after many objections to engage in a task so unsuited to the nature of her office, the abbess, inspired by a natural regard for her only brother, and a desire to obtain for him the object of his choice, whom she justly deemed a pearl among women, and one whom she loved dearly and highly esteemed, left nothing unsaid to urge his suit. M. Jules became a regular visitor at the convent parlour, and daily saw Annette in the presence of the abbess, who, believing that his conversation and gaiety (for he was fresh from Paris, and the camp of Maréchal d'Estrées) might amuse and interest the lonely girl, foresaw that in a second love affair she might gradually be drawn from the terrible memory of the first and of its fatal end.
"They soon became intimate, and all Remiremont rang with gossip; the old condemned the lax discipline of the abbess, and the young rejoiced that the pretty canoness Annette de Chateaunoir was to become the wife of the handsome chevalier.
"In submission to the stronger will of the lady superior, and to the energetic mind of Jules, and perhaps dazzled a little by the brilliance, the splendid uniform, handsome figure, and gay conversation of that redoubtable personage, she passively admitted his addresses. But this new lover's deep dark eye seemed to exercise some mysterious and magnetic influence over her; for, as the poor girl afterwards told me, there were times when his glance seemed full of a terrible fascination, and when she alternately loved and felt a strange coldness—almost an involuntary repugnance for him.
"She strove to conquer this emotion, the origin of which she failed to fathom, and anxious, perhaps, to forget the terrible sequel to her first love among the gaiety proffered by the second, she consented to receive the chevalier as her husband; and lest she might retract, the ceremony was hurried on with a haste on his part which the good-natured gossips of Remiremont averred to be somewhat indelicate at least.