a Bull of Separation from the Pope, on the plea of her husband’s infidelity and cruelty.  The infidelity, to be sure, was no more than, as a Royalty, if not as a woman, she might have bargained for and borne with; but everybody remembers the stories of the king’s drunken violence that got bruited about at the time.  Everybody will remember, too, how, the Papal Separation once pronounced, he had retaliated upon her with a decree of absolute divorce, and a sentence of perpetual banishment, voted by his own parliament.  Whither she had betaken herself after these troubles Paul had never heard—­until, yesterday, arriving at Saint-Graal, they told him she was living cloistered like a nun at Granjolaye.

News travels fast and penetrates everywhere in that lost corner of garrulous Gascony.  The news that Paul had taken up his residence at Saint-Graal could scarcely fail to reach the Queen.  Would she remember their childish intimacy?  Would she make him a sign?  Would she let him see her, for old sake’s sake?  Oh, in all probability, no.  Most certainly, no.  And yet—­and yet, he couldn’t forbid a little furtive hope to flicker in his heart.

V.

It was only April, but the sun shone with midsummer strength.

After Andre left him, he went down into the garden.

From a little distance the house, against the sky, looked insubstantial, a water-colour, painted in grey and amber on a field of luminous blue.  If he had wished it, he could have bathed himself in flowers; hyacinths, crocuses, jonquils, camellias, roses, grew round him everywhere, sending up a symphony of warm odours; further on, in the grass, violets, anemones, celandine; further still, by the margins of the pond, narcissuses, and tall white flowers-de-luce; and, in the shrubberies, satiny azaleas; and overhead, the magnolia trees, drooping with their freight of ivory cups.  The glass doors of the orangery stood open, a cloud of sweetness hanging heavily before them.  In the park, the chestnuts were in full leaf; and surely a thousand birds were twittering and piping amongst their branches.

‘Oh, bother!  How it cries out for a woman,’ said Paul.  ’It’s such a waste of good material’

The beauty went to one’s head.  One craved a sympathetic companion to share it with, a woman on whom to lavish the ardours it enkindled.  ’If I don’t look out I shall become sentimental,’ the lone man told himself.  ’Nature’s so fearfully lacking in tact.  Fancy her singing an epithalamium in a poor fellow’s ears, when he doesn’t know a single human woman nearer than Paris.’  To make matters worse, the day ended in a fiery sunset, and then there was a full moon; and in the rosery a nightingale performed its sobbing serenade.  ’Please go out and give that bird a penny, and tell him to go away,’ Paul said to a servant.  It was all very well to jest, but at every second breath he sighed profoundly.