’If you have done it, take the orderly’s horse who brings this.  It is the best of my stable.  There are a hundred louis in each holster, and the pistols are loaded.  Either course lies open to you if you know what I mean.  In a quarter of an hour I shall know our fate—­ whether I am to be dishonoured and survive you, whether you are guilty and a coward, or whether you are still worthy of the name of

    ‘M.’

This was in the handwriting of the old General de Magny; and my uncle and I, as we walked home at night, having made and divided with the Countess Liliengarten no inconsiderable profits that night, felt our triumphs greatly dashed by the perusal of the letter.  ’Has Magny,’ we asked, ’robbed the Jew, or has his intrigue been discovered?’ In either case, my claims on the Countess Ida were likely to meet with serious drawbacks:  and I began to feel that my ‘great card’ was played and perhaps lost.

Well, it was lost:  though I say, to this day, it was well and gallantly played.  After supper (which we never for fear of consequences took during play) I became so agitated in my mind as to what was occurring that I determined to sally out about midnight into the town, and inquire what was the real motive of Magny’s apprehension.  A sentry was at the door, and signified to me that I and my uncle were under arrest.

We were left in our quarters for six weeks, so closely watched that escape was impossible, had we desired it; but, as innocent men, we had nothing to fear.  Our course of life was open to all, and we desired and courted inquiry.  Great and tragical events happened during those six weeks; of which, though we heard the outline, as all Europe did, when we were released from our captivity, we were yet far from understanding all the particulars, which were not much known to me for many years after.  Here they are, as they were told me by the lady, who of all the world perhaps was most likely to know them.  But the narrative had best form the contents of another chapter.

CHAPTER XII

Tragical history of princess of X——­

More than twenty years after the events described in the past chapters, I was walking with my Lady Lyndon in the Rotunda at Ranelagh.  It was in the year 1790; the emigration from France had already commenced, the old counts and marquises were thronging to our shores:  not starving and miserable, as one saw them a few years afterwards, but unmolested as yet, and bringing with them some token of their national splendour.  I was walking with Lady Lyndon, who, proverbially jealous and always anxious to annoy me, spied out a foreign lady who was evidently remarking me, and of course asked who was the hideous fat Dutchwoman who was leering at me so?  I knew her not in the least.  I felt I had seen the lady’s face somewhere (it was now, as my wife said, enormously fat and bloated); but I did not recognise in the bearer of that face one who had been among the most beautiful women in Germany in her day.