She was the most restless, too, of human beings; but it was the restlessness of a glow of enjoyment, of a bird in the first sunshine, of a butterfly in the first glitter of its wings.  She was now continually forming some party, some ingenious surprise of pleasure, some little sportive excursion, some half theatric scene, to keep all our hearts and eyes as much alive as her own.  Lafontaine obviously did not like all this; and some keen encounters of their wits took place, on the pleasure which, as he averred, “she took in all society but his own.”

“If the charge be true,” said she one day, “why am I in fault?  It is so natural to try to be happy.”

“But, to be happy without me, Mariamne.”

“Ah, what an impossibility!” laughed the little foreigner.

“But, to receive the attentions even of the general, old enough to have married your grandmother.”

“Well, does it not show his taste, even in your own opinion, to follow your example, and admire what you tell me you worship?”

“You are changed; you are a girouette, Mariamne.”

“Well, nothing in the world is so melancholy as one who lets all the world pass by it, without a thought, a feeling, or a wish.  One might as well be one of the pictures in the Louvre, pretty and charming, and gazed at by all the passers-by, without a glance for any of them, in return.  I have no kind of envy for being a mummy, covered with cloth of gold, and standing in a niche of cedar, yet with all its sensations vanished some thousand years ago.”

“Was this the language you held to me when first we met, Mariamne?”

“Was this the language you held to me, when first we met, Charles?  But I shall lose my spirits if I talk to you.  What a sweet evening!  What a delicious breeze! Bon soir!” And forth she went, tripping it among the beds of flowers like a sylph, followed by Lafontaine, moody and miserable, yet unable to resist the spell.  Of those scenes I saw a hundred, regularly ending in the same conclusion; the lady always, as ladies ought, gaining the day, and the gentleman vexed, yet vanquished.  But evil days were at hand; many a trial more severe than the pretty arguments of lovers awaited them; and Lafontaine was to prove himself a hero in more senses than one, before they met again.

It happened, that I was somewhat a favourite with Mariamne.  Yet I was the only one of whom Lafontaine never exhibited a suspicion.  His nature was chivalrous, the rencounter between us he regarded as in the strongest degree a pledge of brotherhood; and he allowed me to bask in the full sunshine of his fair one’s smiles, without a thought of my intercepting one of their beams.  In fact, he almost formally gave his wild bird into my charge.  Accordingly, whenever he was called to London, which was not unfrequently the case, as the business of the emigrants with Government grew more serious, I was her chosen companion; and as she delighted in galloping over the hills and vales of Sussex, I was honoured by being her chief equerry; she repaying the service by acting as my cicerone.