'I thank you, dear Célandine; you will ever have her gratitude, as well as mine; but there are many things to oppose, many interests to thwart our happiness.'
'Alas!' said the French girl, sadly; 'but remember that nothing is impossible.'
And so when Charlie Pierrepont left his kind friends and that charming part of Lorraine, he little knew that he left behind a warm girlish heart that yearned for him, and him only, and thought nothing of Monsieur Adolphe, with all his thousands of francs, her father's choice; and keenly she envied her—the unknown lady—whose miniature was in Charlie's heart.
From the surgeon of a Prussian regiment at Saarbrück, Charlie Pierrepont got a medical certificate, to the effect that he was incapable of rejoining the Thuringians, or of serving for some time. Leave was given him by the general in command, and he took the train from Saarbrück to Aix, to be near Frankenburg and her, of whom he had heard nothing for all those months, that seemed like so many ages now; for Charlie was so much of a lover, that to breathe the same atmosphere with her was a source of joy.
Yet it was a cold and frosty atmosphere now, for Christmas was close at hand, the time when Christmas trees are lighted, when arcades and toyshops, fruiterers and pastry-cooks drive a roaring trade, when circles long separated are reunited, and happy parents sit at the head of happy tables surrounded by shining faces.
The Reichswald was leafless and bare now, and a mantle of snow covered all those heights that surround Aix, which seems to lie in 'a fertile bowl surrounded by bold hills;' and ice lay in masses about the boats of the pontoon bridge of the Rhine. It was on the evening of the third Thursday before the great festival of the Christian year that Charlie found himself in the brilliant speise-saal of the Grand Monarque.
He was now within a very short distance of Frankenburg; but how was he to communicate with Ernestine? See her he must before Christmas-eve, or she could not meet him then; and the hunger, the craving of his heart, was too great to be endured long. He feared to write to Herminia, lest his handwriting might be recognised by the Countess, and to write to Ernestine would too probably be useless, as her correspondence was too probably under her mother's supervision.
What if she should now be the Baroness Grünthal? For months no one had known anything of his existence. All might have believed him to be dead, and she, perhaps yielding to the influences around her; but no, no—he thrust that thought aside, and recalled the solemnity of their vows interchanged at Burtscheid.
Had she not then, and on that eventful night in the boudoir, promised to be faithful to him in life and death? and Charlie smiled at his momentary doubt.
How many people there are in this world who treasure up and con over and over again an impossible day-dream that may never come to pass! Charlie thought of this as, from the hotel windows, he gazed moodily into the snow-covered street, with all its bustle and lamps, and shrank from the passing fear that his aspirations after Ernestine might only be an impossible and unrealizable longing; but see her again he must, even if he went to the Schloss—but no, that would never do after the treatment he had experienced there, and the epithets applied to him by the Countess.