’Sur differentes fleurs l’abeille se repose,
        Et fait du miel de toute chose!’”

CHAPTER VIII

A DISH OF POLITICS

Elise de Tecle was thirty years of age, but appeared much younger.  At seventeen she had married, under peculiar conditions, her cousin Roland de Tecle.  She had been left an orphan at an early age and educated by her mother’s brother, M. des Rameures.  Roland lived very near her Everything brought them together—­the wishes of the family, compatibility of fortune, their relations as neighbors, and a personal sympathy.  They were both charming; they were destined for each other from infancy, and the time fixed for their marriage was the nineteenth birthday of Elise.  In anticipation of this happy event the.  Comte de Tecle rebuilt almost entirely one wing of his castle for the exclusive use of the young pair.  Roland was continually present, superintending and urging on the work with all the ardor of a lover.

One morning loud and alarming cries from the new wing roused all the inhabitants of the castle; the Count burned to the spot, and found his son stunned and bleeding in the arms of one of the workmen.  He had fallen from a high scaffolding to the pavement.  For several months the unfortunate young man hovered between life and death; but in the paroxysms of fever he never ceased calling for his cousin—­his betrothed; and they were obliged to admit the young girl to his bedside.  Slowly he recovered, but was ever after disfigured and lame; and the first time they allowed him to look in a glass he had a fainting-fit that proved almost fatal.

But he was a youth of high principle and true courage.  On recovering from his swoon he wept a flood of bitter tears, which would not, however, wash the scars from his disfigured face.  He prayed long and earnestly; then shut himself up with his father.  Each wrote a letter, the one to M. des Rameures, the other to Elise.  M. des Rameures and his niece were then in Germany.  The excitement and fatigue consequent upon nursing her cousin had so broken her health that the physicians urged a trial of the baths of Ems.  There she received these letters; they released her from her engagement and gave her absolute liberty.

Roland and his father implored her not to return in haste; explained that their intention was to leave the country in a few weeks’ time and establish themselves at Paris; and added that they expected no answer, and that their resolution—­impelled by simple justice to her—­was irrevocable.

Their wishes were complied with.  No answer came.

Roland, his sacrifice once made, seemed calm and resigned; but he fell into a sort of languor, which made fearful progress and hinted at a speedy and fatal termination, for which in fact he seemed to long.  One evening they had taken him to the lime-tree terrace at the foot of the garden.  He gazed with absent eye on the tints with which the setting sun purpled the glades of the wood, while his father paced the terrace with long strides-smiling as he passed him and hastily brushing away a tear as he turned his back.