s natural verdure was left to unmown stretches. The foot
shrank from sending echoes through empty palace apartments, and from
treading the weedy margins of canal and lake.

"I should not have brought you here, Lazarre," said my friend.

"I had to come, monsieur."

We walked through meadow and park to the little palaces called Grand and
Petit Trianon, where the intimate life of the last royal family had been
lived. I looked well at their outer guise, but could not explore them.

The groom held our horses in the street that leads up to the Place
d'Armes, and as we sauntered back, I kicked old leaves which had fallen
autumn after autumn and banked the path.

It rushed over me again!

I felt my arms go above my head as they did when I sank into the depths
of recollection.

"Lazarre! Are you in a fit?" The Marquis du Plessy seized me.

"I remember! I remember! I was kicking the leaves--I was walking with my
father and mother--somewhere--somewhere--and something threatened us!"

"It was in the garden of the Tuileries," said the Marquis du Plessy
sternly. "The mob threatened you, and you were going before the National
Assembly! I walked behind. I was there to help defend the king."

We stood still until the paroxysmal rending in my head ceased. Then I
sat on the grassy roadside trying to smile at the marquis, and shrugging
an apology for my weakness. The beauty of the arched trees disappeared,
and when next I recognized the world we were moving slowly toward Paris
in a heavy carriage, and I was smitten with the conviction that my
friend had not eaten the dinner he ordered in the town of Versailles.

I felt ashamed of the weakness which came like an eclipse, and withdrew
leaving me in my strength. It ceased to visit me within that year, and
has never troubled me at all in later days. Yet, inconsistently, I look
back as to the glamour of youth; and though it worked me hurt and
shame, I half regret that it is gone.

The more I saw of the Marquis du Plessy the more my slow tenacious heart
took hold on him. We went about everywhere together. I think it was his
hope to wed me to his company and to Paris, and shove the Mittau venture
into an indefinite future; yet he spared no pains in obtaining for me my
passports to Courland.

At this time, with cautious, half reluctant hand, he raised the veil
from a phase of life which astonished and revolted me. I loved a woman.
The painted semblances of women who inhabited a world