About nine o'clock Julian or Clement always came to accompany her back to Rosenheim—a half-hour's walk from the princess' house, which was at the other end of the city. On this occasion, when she was sent for, she was so absorbed in her own thoughts that she did not notice which of the two was with her. It was starlight, but very cold, and her hair was blown about by the wind from beneath her little velvet hat.
“Draw your hood up, Gabrielle; it has not been so cold this winter.”
It was Clement's voice which suddenly roused her from her reverie.
“Is it you, Clement?—Excuse me, I did not know whether I was with you or Julian.”
He gently attempted to raise her hood.
“No, no!” she said earnestly. “Let me breathe the air. Though it is scarcely more than two years since I saw snow for the first time in my life, I am not afraid of the cold. I could if necessary endure far more severe weather than this.—There!” And she took off her hat and walked some steps with her head completely exposed to the frosty night air. “You know,” she continued, with an animation that singularly contrasted with her previous silence—“you know, during the Russian campaign, those who endured the cold best were the Neapolitan soldiers. Well, like them, I have brought a supply of sunshine from the South which much harder frosts than this could not exhaust!”
Nevertheless, at Clement's renewed entreaties, she laughingly put on her hat, and they walked quickly along, leaving scarcely a trace of their steps on the hard snow, deep as it was.
Her liveliness that evening was strange! Clement noticed it without comprehending the cause. Her cheerful tone and charming smile, instead of delighting him as usual, now made him inexpressibly uneasy, and sadder than ever!
XLIV.
As is often the case with people of violent and impressionable natures, the Princess Catherine seldom saw things long in the same light. Though her thoughts were sorrowfully fastened on one subject in consequence of the tragical events that so suddenly threw a dark, ominous veil over a life hitherto so smiling, she found means of giving a thousand different shades to her misfortune, and it was not always easy to follow her in the fitful turns of her grief. What consoled her one day was a source of irritation the next: what she affirmed in the morning, she vehemently denied in the evening. Sometimes she expressed her fears on purpose that they might be opposed; at other times, she burst into tears at the slightest contradiction, and, if they endeavored to reassure her, she accused them of cruelty and indifference to her troubles.