Not a word was spoken by any of us present, but we gave a silent acquiescence. I wrote and Count Saxe signed a few lines accepting General Lacy’s terms, and this was at once despatched.
Count Saxe assembled all of his followers upon the terrace, gave each man a sum of money and appointed a rendezvous in Königsberg. I think there was but one man who did not fully expect to return to Courland the next year in triumph. I was that one man. I had ever believed Count Saxe’s star led him not to statecraft, but to war.
He named me first to go with him, Gaston Cheverny and Beauvais, and, of course, Mademoiselle Capello. He told me to represent to Francezka it would be better for her to assume her boy’s dress on our retreat.
I went to the other end of the terrace, to Francezka’s 131 tower, and knocked softly on the window. She opened it, and I told her in a few words of our plans. She received my communication without blenching. To tell the truth, anything might well have seemed better to her than imprisonment in that half ruined tower, for that is what it really came to. When I told her she must resume her brown riding suit, she sighed, and her soft, pensive eyes filled with tears; but she made no protest, and said she would be ready to start at any moment. By heaven, she was a soldier!
In the golden dawn of the morning we saw Uzmaiz for the last time. An odorous wind blew from the pine forests. The lake was like molten silver as we pulled across it. Francezka sat silent and composed and beautiful in the boat. She wore her riding suit, and her crimson mantle, which, luckily, was sexless, was wrapped about her. I wondered what eager, tumultuous thoughts were in her mind, for now she was setting forth again, a pilgrim and a wayfarer. But the lives of four men, without fear, stood between her and harm.
CHAPTER XI
A LOST CAUSE
There is something in having a good horse under one which mightily uplifts a weary heart. It is like meat and drink, a consolation that rises in the blood and makes its way to the seat of the soul, which goes soaring. So it was with us on that September morning when we left Uzmaiz. We had been cooped up for over a month on the island, and every moment of our waking time had been full of labor and anxiety. Now, the worst had befallen us; and there is something of relief in the thought that there are no more bolts to fall. I believe that Count Saxe carried no delusions away from Uzmaiz. He did not at once give up his cause as lost, but I think he saw the game was not worth the winning. But for courage and smiling patience, one might have thought he had won the day, instead of being driven out, like a vagrant dog, from a strange fireside.