"If you weep, what shall I do?" asked Eugene. "Why do you take it so much to heart?"
"Why?" exclaimed she. "Because I am no longer young, and I have lost my last hope of happiness. You, at least, have life and the world before you."
"And I," said he, languidly—"I am young, and have a lifetime wherein to suffer. The world is before me! Yes; but it is a waste, without tree or flower. With scorched eyes and blistered feet, I must tread its burning sands alone. Forgive me, dear lady, if I ask permission to go. If I stay much longer, my aching head will burst."
"You are wan as a spectre, my poor Eugene," returned the duchess, laying her hand upon his arm. and looking him compassionately in the face.
"And, in truth, I am but the corpse of the living man of yesterday," sighed he. "Let me go home, that I may bury myself and my dead hopes together."
The duchess rang for her gentleman in waiting, and requested him to accompany the prince to his carriage, and thence to the Hotel de Soissons; but Eugene gently refused the proffered escort, and begged to be allowed to depart alone. He turned away, and as the duchess watched his receding figure, she saw him reel from side to side, like a man intoxicated.
At last he was at home. He had strength left to alight, to ascend the long marble staircase, whose balustrade was now hidden by a thicket of climbing jessamines, and to enter the antechamber leading to the apartments of state.
Monsieur Louis, with the elite of his workmen, was decorating its walls with hangings of white satin, looped with garlands suspended from the bills of cooing doves. When he beheld the prince, he came triumphantly forward.
"See. your highness, this is but the vestibule of the temple! When you will have seen its interior, you will confess that it is worthy the abode of the loveliest bride that ever graced its princely halls."
Eugene neither interrupted nor answered him. He raised his large, mournful eyes to the festooned roses, the gilded doves, the snowy, shimmering satin, and to his fading senses they seemed gradually to darken into cypress-wreaths and funereal palls. He pressed his hand upon his bursting heart, and fell insensible to the floor.