"D'Estouville! is this indeed you?"
"I am happy to say it is; who else could it be, monsieur? I was very tired of being a prisonnier de guerre in that gloomy bastile in the Scottish capital; but an exchange of prisoners took place soon after you left it, and now I am again a free man, fighting the battles of the Emperor with the eagle over my brow, and wearing my belted sword. Brave work it is,—but I am as miserable now, as I was then."
"Hard fighting and no promotion, perhaps?"
"We have plenty of both in the service of the great Emperor. I am now major in the battalion of the Guard."
"Allow me to congratulate you. And—and—what was the lady's name? Diane de Montmichel?"
"C'est le diable!" muttered he, while his cheek grew pale as death; but the emotion instantly passed away, and a bold and careless look replaced it.
"D'Estouville, you did not find her faithless, I hope?"
"I found her only Madame la Colonelle, as we say in our service."
"The wife of your colonel! How much I regret to hear it. The devil! I think women are all alike perfidious."
"Perfidious indeed, Monsieur Stuart, as many a husband and lover, on his return from captivity, finds to his cost. But I mean to revenge myself on the whole sex, and care no more for the best of them, than for the meanest fille de joie that ever was horsed through a camp on the wooden steed. On my return to France, I hastened to the valley of Lillebonne, but it was no longer a paradise to me. My sisters were all married to knaves who cared nothing for me, and a grassy grave in the church-yard was all that remained to me of my dear mother. But miséricorde! la belle Diane was no longer there,—she had become the wife of my colonel, the Baron de Clappourknuis, forgetting poor Victor D'Estouville, her first love, (that which romancers make such a fuss about); he who had preferred her before all the maidens of the valley of Lillebonne,—and there they are numerous and as beautiful as the roses."