Ten victories would not cost as much as the first week’s march towards the frontier.  Every thicket will have its troop; every finger, for a hundred leagues round, will be on the trigger.  Robbery and murder, famine and fatigue; disease and death, will be upon the troops; the retreat will become a flight, and happy is the man who will ever see the Rhine again.  Be wise in time.”

Enclosed within this long epistle was a brief note from Mariamne.

“You must not think me dying, because I importune you no longer.  But, can you give me any tidings of Lafontaine?  I know that he is rash, and even enthusiastic; but I equally know that he is faithful and true. Yet, if he has forgotten me, or is married, or is any thing that, as a preux chevalier, he ought not to be, tell me at once, and you shall see how grateful I can be, before I cease to be any thing.  But if he has fallen—­if, in the dreadful scenes now acting in Paris, Lafontaine is no more—­tell me not.  Write some deluding thing to me—­conceal your terrible knowledge.  I should not wish to drop down dead before my father’s face.  He is looking at me while I write this, and I am trying to laugh, with a heart as heavy as lead, and eyes that can scarcely see the paper.  No—­for mercy’s sake, do not tell me that he is dead.  Give me gentle words, give me hope, deceive me—­as they give laudanum, not to prolong life, but to lull agony.  Do this, and with my last pulse I shall be grateful—­with my last breath I shall bless you.”

Poor Mariamne!  I had, at least, better hopes than those for her.  But within this billet was a third.  It was but a few lines; yet at the foot of those lines was the signature—­“Clotilde de Tourville.”  The light almost forsook my eyes; my head swam; if the paper had been a talisman, and every letter written with the pen of magic, it could not have produced a more powerful effect upon me.  My hands trembled, and my ears thrilled; and yet it contained but a few unimportant words—­an enquiry addressed to Mariamne, whether she could forward a letter to the Chateau Montauban in Champagne, or whether her father had any correspondent in the vicinity who could send her the picture of a beloved relative, which, in the haste of their flight to England, they had most reluctantly left behind.

The note at once threw every thing else into the background.  What were invasions and armies—­what were kings and kingdoms—­to the slightest wish of the being who had written this billet?  All this I admit to be the fever of the mind—­a waking dream—­an illusion to which mesmerism or magic is but a frivolity.  Like all fevers, it is destined to pass away, or to kill the patient; yet for the time, what on earth is so strange, or so powerful—­so dangerous to the reason—­so delicious to the soul!

But, after the long reverie into which I sank, with the writing of Clotilde in my hand, I recollected that fortune had for once given me the power of meeting the wishes of this noble and beautiful creature.  The resemblance of the picture that had so much perplexed and attracted me, was now explained.  I was in the Chateau de Montauban, and I now blessed the chance which had sent me to its honoured walls.