“Oh, if these wars were but over,” said he to his wife, “how I would rejoice to give her to him, he is such a brave and gallant fellow—­but as tender-hearted and kind as he is brave!”

“These weary, weary wars!” said Madame de Lescure, with a sigh, “would they were over:  would, with all my heart, they had never been begun.  How well does the devil do his work on earth, when he is able to drive the purest, the most high-minded, the best of God’s creatures to war and bloodshed as the only means of securing to themselves the liberty of worshipping their Saviour and honouring their King!”

Henri himself, however, had not considered the propriety of waiting until the wars were over before he took a wife for himself, or at any rate before he asked the consent of the lady’s friends:  for the day before he left Clisson, he determined to speak to Charles on the subject; though he had long known Marie so well, and had now been staying a week in the house, he had never yet told her that he loved her.  It was the custom of the age and the country for a lover first to consult the friends of the young lady, and though the peculiar circumstances of his position might have emboldened Henri to dispense with such a practice, he was the last man in the world to take advantage of his situation.

“Charles,” said he, the evening before his departure, as he stood close to the garden seat, on which his cousin was sitting, and amused himself with pitching stones into the river, which ran beneath the lawn at Clisson.  “Charles, I shall be off tomorrow; I almost envy you the broken arm which keeps you here.”

“It won’t keep me long now, Henri,” said he; “I shall be at Chatillon in a week’s time, unless you and d’Elbee have moved to Parthenay before that.  Cathelineau will by that time be master of Nantes, that is, if he is ever to be master of it.”

“Don’t doubt it, Charles.  I do not the least:  think of all Charette’s army.  I would wager my sword to a case-dagger, that Nantes is in his hands this minute.”

“We cannot always have the luck we had at Saumur, Henri?”

“No,” said Henri, “nor can we always have a de Lescure to knock down for us the gates of the republicans.”

“Nor yet a Larochejaquelin to force his way through the breach,” said the other.

“Now we are even,” said Henri, laughing; “but really, without joking, I feel confident that the white flag is floating at this moment on the castle at Nantes; but it is not of that, Charles, that I wish to speak now.  You have always been an elder brother to me.  We have always been like brothers, have we not?”

“Thank God, we have, Henri! and I do not think it likely that we shall ever be more distant to each other.”

“No, that I’m sure we never shall.  You are too good either to quarrel yourself, or to let me quarrel with you; but though we never can be more distant, we may yet be more near to each other.  You know what I mean, Charles?”