To destroy the time, I asked for my bill; I set myself to reckon up the chickens I had eaten: a greater than I did not disdain this trouble. Henry Tudor, seventh of the name, in whom ended the Wars of the Roses, red and white, even as I am going to unite the white and the tricolour cockades, Henry VII.[548] initialled one after the other the pages of a little account-book which I have seen:
"To a woman for three apples, 12 pence; for discovering three hares, 6 shillings 8 pence; to Master Bernard, the blind poet, 100 shillings [this was better than Homer]; to a little man at Shaftesbury, 20 shillings."
We have many little men to-day, but they cost more than twenty shillings.
Country road to Waldmünchen.
At three o'clock, the hour at which the express might be back, I went with Hyacinthe along the road to Haselbach. It was a windy day, the sky was strewn with clouds that passed across the sun, casting their shadows over the fields and fir-groves. We were preceded by a herd of cattle from the village, which raised, as it went, the noble dust of the army of the Grand-duke of Quirocia, to which the Knight of the Mancha so valiantly gave battle[549]. A Calvary rose at the top of one of the ascents of the road; from there one discerned a long ribbon of the high-way. Seated in a ravine, I questioned Hyacinthe:
"Sister Anne, seest thou no one coming?"
Some village carts seen from afar made our hearts beat; as they approached, they proved to be empty, like everything that bears dreams. I had to return home and dine very sadly. A plank offered after the shipwreck: the diligence was to pass at six o'clock; might it not bring the Governor's reply? Six o'clock struck: no diligence. At a quarter past six, Baptiste entered the room:
"The ordinary post from Prague has just arrived; there is nothing for Monsieur."
The last ray of hope was extinguished.
*