It may be imagined how pleasant this was to Gaston Cheverny, who could scarce come near Francezka for the press. Moreover, Count Saxe attended that camp to work, and he made everybody under him work; so that Gaston Cheverny had not many hours to play the gallant to any one. Regnard Cheverny, who was merely a guest, had all the time he wanted to pursue Mademoiselle Capello, but not even he, the persistent, the tenacious, could charge successfully through the cordon of admirers which always surrounded Francezka now. I saw her sometimes at a distance, dancing at a ball, and looking like a fairy princess out of a story book; or, riding like a lapwing with Count Saxe, and other officers; or again, in gorgeous pleasure parties on the river. But she was like a comet in its brilliant but erratic course through the heavens, and no longer a fixed star, whose orbit is known.
Gaston Cheverny’s misery was extreme. He passed at once from the high heaven of delight to the lowest deeps of wretchedness, because, forsooth, Mademoiselle Capello did not show him the exclusive consideration she had bestowed on him in Brabant. He called her many of the hardest names in the lexicon; one would have thought to hear him rail at her, that she was under a strict obligation not to speak to another man than himself. Count Saxe and I rallied him often, but he grew so savage about it that presently we desisted. Regnard was far more debonair and reasonable, 219 but I have always distrusted that man who is entirely reasonable in his loves and his hates.
At last the June days came to an end, and with it, the gorgeous pageantry of the camp of Radewitz. In a night the splendid scene vanished. The silken tents, the canvas palaces, suddenly were no more. The fleet of purple-sailed pleasure boats upon the Elbe floated away; the fair green slopes, the gardens created as if by magic were trampled on by thirty thousand men on the march. The highway was choked with coaches and baggage-wagons and horsemen and horsewomen, and the inns on the roads that led from Radewitz were like camps, so many persons being forced to lodge out of doors. Count Saxe and myself, with Gaston Cheverny and faithful Beauvais, the valet, and other servants, scarcely slept in a bed from the time we left Radewitz until we reached Brussels. One reason was, that in common with other officers, Count Saxe was more generous than prudent, and after having lodged with kings at the camp, often he had not the money for a good inn. Then we were glad to take up our quarters in a roomy, clean barn; and one or two of the June nights we slept on the ground in our cloaks, as soldiers should.
In Brussels, my master made known his necessities to his father, the King of Saxony, who sent him a splendid remittance. Count Saxe remained in Brussels while awaiting this remittance, so that he might judiciously determine, in advance, how to spend it; and after it came, he naturally continued there, so as to carry out the intentions so carefully formed.
This time he allowed me to spend in Brabant, and 220 also gave Gaston Cheverny leave; and Gaston inviting, or rather commanding me to become his guest, we had a whole fortnight at the Manoir Cheverny.
Regnard went to his own castle of Haret. He civilly entreated me to visit him, but Gaston putting in his claim strongly to all my time, I was, very willingly, driven to decline.
We parted from Regnard at Brussels, and rode out in a morning to the Manoir Cheverny. At every step of the road, Gaston swore a new, strong and strange oath, that he was done with Mademoiselle Capello; that no word or act of hers could ever induce him to return to her, no, not if she made her way from the château of Capello to the Manoir Cheverny on her knees. From reproaching her, he turned to bitterly reviling me, because I had not stuck my sword all the way through his body, instead of only about six inches, on our first acquaintance. To this I made irreverent answers as we rode through the pleasant country. It was barely noon of the summer day when we came within sight of the Manoir Cheverny, and at the same time saw the château of Capello sitting, white and beautiful and stately upon its marble terraces and above its fair gardens and green slopes, like a queen upon her throne. We skirted the domain and entered the pleasure grounds of the Manoir Cheverny, and soon were reposing ourselves in the ancient and comfortable old house.
Two or three old servants had been kept in the place, and it was well aired and in good order. Scarce had we sat down to an excellent dinner with good wine, when a letter was brought to Gaston Cheverny. It was from Mademoiselle Capello, and invited us, both in her own 221 name and Madame Riano’s, to become her guests at supper that evening.
Without one word of apology, Gaston Cheverny dashed away from the dinner table, wrote a letter of acceptance, and came back looking exactly as a man does when he has won the first prize in the lottery, or has just received a field marshal’s baton. In an instant of time, and by a stroke of Francezka’s pen, all of his grievances, his resolves, his fierce resentment, melted away like the mists of the morning. Nobody could complain that Gaston Cheverny was coldly reasonable in his love.
Six o’clock was the hour named in Francezka’s letter, but Gaston’s impatience was so great that we set out a little after five, and spent the time loitering in the great park. If I had thought the château of Capello lovely in the autumn days, more than two years before, when the woods were russet, the earth brown, how much lovelier did it appear in this rare summer afternoon when it was one vast garden of beauty! The green, softly rolling hills, the rich park, the purple woods, the château rising from its emerald terraces, its marble balustrades gleaming white, the fountains plashing diamonds, the lake blue and still and melancholy, the Italian garden like a poet’s dream—my senses ached with so much beauty—but I forgot it all, when, in the sunset glow, I saw Francezka Capello.