[II.]
GAUVAIN MEDITATING.
His reverie was fathomless.
An unheard of change had taken place.
The Marquis de Lantenac had been transfigured, and Gauvain had seen it with his own eyes.
He would never have believed it possible that such a state of things could have come to pass from any complication of events whatsoever. Even in a dream he could not have imagined such a condition of affairs.
The Unforeseen, that inexplicable force that makes a man the plaything of its capricious will, had seized Gauvain and held him fast.
Before his eyes he beheld the realization of the impossible,—visible, palpable, inevitable, inexorable.