The next few days were busy enough, and I scarce rested by night or day. A week passed, and, hearing nothing of Gaston Cheverny, I tried to persuade myself that my eyes had been deceived. Truly, although I have been a thousand times in places of much greater danger, I do not think I have ever known greater excitement, or conditions when a man could be more readily deceived than that midnight in the market-place of Prague. I said this to myself many times. It is strange how a man will argue with himself to believe a thing which he can not believe, and will silence, without convincing, himself.
I was revolving these things in my mind one night, about a week afterward, on my way alone through the 455 narrow, dark unlighted streets, lying black in the shadows of the overhanging houses. And then there passed across my path, a figure in a ragged black cloak—a figure with the face of Gaston Cheverny. I followed him, but I seemed to be following a ghost; for in the tangle of streets and lanes, he was lost to me. I spent two full hours hunting this shade; but had it been actually a ghost it could not have disappeared more completely.
I went to Count Saxe’s quarters. It was then near midnight, and Count Saxe had gone to bed; but on the table, wide open, with some other letters for me to read, was a letter from Gaston Cheverny to Count Saxe, dated the very day before the capture of Prague.
So I was deceived. He was not and never had been in Prague. I had been deceived by some chance resemblance. It was upon events like these that Madame Riano based her absurd belief in second sight.
But let it not appear that I am a man easily deluded when I declare that from the hour I saw the man I took for Gaston Cheverny in the burning house at Prague, I knew that Francezka was in sore distress, and even in need of her poor Babache. Something within me was ever calling—calling, in Francezka’s name—“Come to me!”
There are degrees in these superstitions of the heart. Sometimes they usurp the scepter of the brain. Then, indeed, are they dangerous and foolish. Again, it is known to be only the cry of the heart; and the poor, tormented heart waits patiently upon its master, the brain. So it was with me. Deep as was my yearning to see Francezka, I said no word of it to the most 456 indulgent of masters, until the time was ripe that I might go. Francezka herself was governed by the law of common sense; she would not wish me to come to her when it was against my duty. So I fulfilled all my duty, in spite of the burden of the spirit—the strange, almost irresistible call for me to leave all and go straight to Francezka, until I could, in honor, ask for leave.
We were settled then in winter quarters. We had heard twice in this time from Gaston Cheverny. Being near home, in the borders of Hanover, for the winter, he had got leave—so he wrote—and would spend six weeks at the château of Capello, with Francezka. He wished that Count Saxe and I might take advantage of the lull in hostilities and come to Capello.
It was when I was in the act of reading this letter that my reserve broke down, and I told Count Saxe all—all—and that I desired to go to Francezka. And then, for the first time since I was a little, smooth-cheeked boy, playing in the weedy gardens of the Marais with Adrienne Lecouvreur, I wept like a woman. Count Saxe sat and looked at me with more than a brother’s tenderness. He knew I was not a coward, for I had led his Uhlans, and what he said to me was this:
“Lose not a moment in going, Babache. It is because you love her so much that you know she is in distress. I think you would know as much, if it were I instead of Francezka.”
Which was true. I can not believe that Count Saxe should need me, and I not know it, were I at the other end of the world.