ow it's war. I declare
war on them. They will have it! I mean to take that girl from
them--snatch or catch! The girl is my girl, and if there are laws against
my having my own, to powder with the laws! Well, and do you suppose me
likely to be beaten? Then Cicero was a fiction, and Caesar a people's
legend. Not if they are history, and eloquence and commandership have
power over the blood and souls of men. First, I write to her!'

His friend suggested that he knew not where she was. But already the pen
was at work, the brain pouring as from a pitcher.

Writing was blood-letting, and the interminable pages drained him of his
fever. As he wrote, she grew more radiant, more indistinct, more fiercely
desired. The concentration of his active mind directed his whole being on
the track of Clotilde, idealizing her beyond human. That last day when he
had seen her appeared to him as the day of days. That day was Clotilde
herself, she in person; he saw it as the woman, and saw himself
translucent in the great luminousness; and behind it all was dark, as in
front. That one day was the sun of his life. It had been a day of rain,
and he beheld it in memory just as it had been, with the dark threaded
air, the dripping streets; and he glorified it past all daily radiance.
His letter was a burning hymn to the day. His moral grandeur on the day
made him live as part of the splendour. Was it possible for the woman who
had seen him then to be faithless to him? The swift deduction from his
own feelings cleansed her of a suspicion to the contrary, and he became
lighthearted. He hummed an air when he had finished his letter to her.

Councils with his adherents and couriers were held, and some were
despatched to watch the house and slip the letter to her maid; others
were told off to bribe and hound their way on the track of Clotilde. His
gold rained into their hands with the directions.

Colonel von Tresten was the friend of his attachment to the baroness; a
friend of both, and a warm one. Men coming into contact with Alvan took
their shape of friend or enemy sharply, for he was friend or enemy of no
dubious feature, devoted to them he loved, and a battery on them he
opposed. The colonel had been the confidant of the baroness's grief over
this love-passion of Alvan's, and her resignation. He shared her doubts
of Clotilde's nobility of character: the reports were not favourable to
the young lady. But the baroness and he were of one opinion, t