This did not disturb me, however.  I thought more of my sister.  And I thought of vast stretches across the center of Europe.  The Indian stirred in me, as it always did stir, when the woman I wanted was withdrawn from me.

I could not tell my friend, or any man, about Madame de Ferrier.  This story of my life is not to be printed until I am gone from the world.  Otherwise the things set down so freely would remain buried in myself.

Some beggars started from hovels, running like dogs, holding diseased and crooked-eyed children up for alms, and pleading for God’s sake that we would have pity on them.  When they disappeared with their coin I asked the marquis if there had always been wretchedness in France.

“There is always wretchedness everywhere,” he answered.  “Napoleon can turn the world upside down, but he cannot cure the disease of hereditary poverty.  I never rode to Versailles without encountering these people.”

When we entered the Place d’Armes fronting the palace, desolation worse than that of the beggars faced us.  That vast noble pile, untenanted and sacked, symbolized the vanished monarchy of France.  Doors stood wide.  The court was strewn with litter and filth; and grass started rank betwixt the stones where the proudest courtiers in the world had trod.  I tried to enter the queen’s rooms, but sat on the steps leading to them, holding my head in my hands.  It was as impossible as it had been to enter the Temple.

The fountains which once made a concert of mist around their lake basin, satisfying like music, the marquis said, were dried, and the figures broken.  Millions had been spent upon this domain of kings, and nothing but the summer’s natural verdure was left to unmown stretches.  The foot shrank from sending echoes through empty palace apartments, and from treading the weedy margins of canal and lake.

“I should not have brought you here, Lazarre,” said my friend.

“I had to come, monsieur.”

We walked through meadow and park to the little palaces called Grand and Petit Trianon, where the intimate life of the last royal family had been lived.  I looked well at their outer guise, but could not explore them.

The groom held our horses in the street that leads up to the Place d’Armes, and as we sauntered back, I kicked old leaves which had fallen autumn after autumn and banked the path.

It rushed over me again!

I felt my arms go above my head as they did when I sank into the depths of recollection.

“Lazarre!  Are you in a fit?” The Marquis du Plessy seized me.

“I remember!  I remember!  I was kicking the leaves—­I was walking with my father and mother—­somewhere—­somewhere—­and something threatened us!”

“It was in the garden of the Tuileries,” said the Marquis du Plessy sternly.  “The mob threatened you, and you were going before the National Assembly!  I walked behind.  I was there to help defend the king.”