It was the first time I had really any conversation with Francezka. How far removed in every way from the scene of our first meeting—the ancient, well ordered garden of a splendid Paris hôtel. But there is certainly a subtile fascination in these singular and unexpected meetings. No one with a taste for the wine of life, but relishes the unusual, least of all Francezka; for I saw plainly, under all her softness, a soul like 118 Peggy Kirkpatrick’s. And the more I knew of her in after years, the more I knew that she had the courage of a Crusader only partly concealed by a pretty, affected shyness. After she had done her will, she trembled, hesitated, blushed, looked down in timidity, looked up for approval—and was very ready with tears, when she required them.
We three sat together for an hour, Francezka doing most of the speaking. She told us something of her travels with Madame Riano. They had set out from Paris very shortly after Count Saxe’s departure, and had spent nearly a year in visiting the various German courts. She was unflinchingly loyal to her aunt, but she would have been more or less than human could she have told without laughing of Madame Riano’s adventures, and Francezka was, herself, a wit, and a child of laughter. She told us some of the most vivid events of their scamperings over Europe—Francezka looking away meanwhile to avoid seeing me smile, and sometimes covering her face with her mantle to smother her merriment.
Scotch Peg had caused panics, earthquakes and convulsions at every court she had visited, especially the smaller German ones, where the pettiness, the rigidity and the absurdity of things were manifest to others besides Peggy Kirkpatrick. She had hectored over grand dukes, had flouted their mistresses, gibed at their prime ministers, and argued with their ecclesiastics. All this would have been easily checked in an ordinary woman; but Madame the Countess Riano del Valdozo y Kirkpatrick, with a vast fortune, with a powerful backing at the courts of France and Spain—for she 119 never lacked friends—was a considerable person, and as Francezka told us, with dancing eyes, Madame Riano had made good her promise never to leave any place until she was ready.
When the fire was dying to a bed of coals, Francezka rose to leave us. She thanked me with tears in her eyes for coming after her; stipulated that Schnelling must give up her clothes—I believe she would have lived and died in that forest if she could not have got her garments and her laced hat—and then, making us a curtsy, as if she were in her aunt’s great saloon at Paris, retired to her bed of boughs. Then I had some supper. Gaston Cheverny, wrapping himself in his cloak, lay down at Francezka’s feet. I slept, sitting with my back against the trunk of a tree; and though I had marched long and hard that day, I envied the two their quiet and unbroken slumber from then until daylight came.
We were up with the lark. The flush of dawn was in the pearly sky, but under the thick black fir trees all was darkly shadowed still. We went in search of Schnelling, who was already stirring. I had meant to ask him civilly for Mademoiselle Capello’s clothes, but this is the way Gaston Cheverny, with the hot blood of twenty, went about getting them:
“Schnelling,” he said, “give us Mademoiselle Capello’s clothes.”
“Or what?” asked Schnelling laughing.
“There are two of us who will have your heart’s blood!”
Schnelling, to my surprise, laughed again, and chose to accede to the request with mock humility; but no 120 doubt he saw that it was actually the part of wisdom to give them up. Gaston Cheverny told me afterward that when he took the clothes to Francezka she was overjoyed, and only consented to wear her masculine attire after his representing to her that she would tear her skirts to shreds in our march to Uzmaiz.
I was taken to Colonel Pintsch, who reiterated to me his story about being a part of Bibikoff’s force, which was a lie on the face of it, and a Courland lie at that. And then, some breakfast having been given us, we were suffered to depart. Schnelling went with us to guide us through the gloomy mazes of the forest. It was a brilliant August day, but all was dark in that melancholy region of chasms, rocks and hardy trees of the North. Francezka walked between Gaston Cheverny and me. We helped her as we could, over the rough places, but she was singularly active, and made her way lightly along. Happiness shone in her face. I began to fear that the lucky result of this catastrophe would not go far toward teaching her prudence.