my first request so decidedly that I
dared not urge it. "Henceforth, Anna," said he, "you will move in a
different sphere of life; and though it is possible that you may have
the power of showing favour to your relations from time to time, yet
much or familiar intercourse will be undesirable, and is what I cannot
allow." I felt almost afraid, after this formal speech, of asking my
father and Fritz to come and see me; but, when the agony of bidding
them farewell overcame all my prudence, I did beg them to pay me a visit
ere long. But they shook their heads, and spoke of business at home,
of different kinds of life, of my being a Frenchwoman now. Only my
father broke out at last with a blessing, and said, "If my child is
unhappy--which God forbid--let her remember that her father's house is
ever open to her." I was on the point of crying out, "Oh! take me back
then now, my father! oh, my father!" when I felt, rather than saw, my
husband present near me. He looked on with a slightly contemptuous air;
and, taking my hand in his, he led me weeping away, saying that short
farewells were always the best when they were inevitable.

It took us two days to reach his chateau in the Vosges, for the roads
were bad and the way difficult to ascertain. Nothing could be more
devoted than he was all the time of the journey. It seemed as if he
were trying in every way to make up for the separation which every hour
made me feel the more complete between my present and my former life.
I seemed as if I were only now wakening up to a full sense of what
marriage was, and I dare say I was not a cheerful companion on the
tedious journey. At length, jealousy of my regret for my father and
brother got the better of M. de la Tourelle, and he became so much
displeased with me that I thought my heart would break with the sense of
desolation. So it was in no cheerful frame of mind that we approached
Les Rochers, and I thought that perhaps it was because I was so unhappy
that the place looked so dreary. On one side, the chateau looked like a
raw new building, hastily run up for some immediate purpose, without any
growth of trees or underwood near it, only the remains of the stone used
for building, not yet cleared away from the immediate neighbourhood,
although weeds and lichens had been suffered to grow near and over the
heaps of rubbish; on the other, were the great rocks from which the
place took its name, and rising close against them, as if almost