The constraint that I was enduring was so alien to my habits and so beyond my strength that I came nigh to fainting.  To obtain relief I went and threw myself on the grass in the park.  This was a refuge to me in all my troubles.  These mighty oaks, this moss which had clung to their branches through the centuries, these pale, sweet-scented wild flowers, emblems of secret sorrow, these were the friends of my childhood, and these alone I had found the same in social as in savage life.  I buried my face in my hands; and I never remember having suffered more in any of the calamities of my life, though some that I had to bear afterward were very real.  On the whole I ought to have accounted myself lucky, on giving up the rough and perilous trade of a cut-throat, to find so many unexpected blessings—­affection, devotion, riches, liberty, education, good precepts and good examples.  But it is certain that, in order to pass from a given state to its opposite, though it be from evil to good, from grief to joy, from fatigue to repose, the soul of a man must suffer; in this hour of birth of a new destiny all the springs of his being are strained almost to breaking—­even as at the approach of summer the sky is covered with dark clouds, and the earth, all a-tremble, seems about to be annihilated by the tempest.

At this moment my only thought was to devise some means of appeasing my hatred of M. de la Marche without betraying and without even arousing a suspicion of the mysterious bond which held Edmee in my power.  Though nothing was less respected at Roche-Mauprat than the sanctity of an oath, yet the little reading I had had there—­those ballads of chivalry of which I have already spoken—­had filled me with an almost romantic love of good faith; and this was about the only virtue I had acquired there.  My promise of secrecy to Edmee was therefore inviolable in my eyes.

“However,” I said to myself, “I dare say I shall find some plausible pretext for throwing myself upon my enemy and strangling him.”

To confess the truth, this was far from easy with a man who seemed bent on being all politeness and kindness.

Distracted by these thoughts, I forgot the dinner hour; and when I saw the sun sinking behind the turrets of the castle I realized too late that my absence must have been noticed, and that I could not appear without submitting to Edmee’s searching questions, and to the abbe’s cold, piercing gaze, which, though it always seemed to avoid mine, I would suddenly surprise in the act of sounding the very depths of my conscience.

I resolved not to return to the house till nightfall, and I threw myself upon the grass and tried to find rest for my aching head in sleep.  I did fall asleep in fact.  When I awoke the moon was rising in the heavens, which were still red with the glow of sunset.  The noise which had aroused me was very slight; but there are some sounds which strike the heart before reaching the ear; and the subtlest