of humanity. Three years of careless happiness, three years of
indolent and tranquil ease, unmarked by any great event, pass over our
heads unnoted, and, save in the gray hairs which they scatter, leave
no memorial of their transit, more than the sunshine of a happy summer
day. They are, they are gone, they are forgotten.

Even three years of gloom and sorrow, of that deep anguish which at
the time the sufferer believes to be indelible and everlasting, lag on
their weary, desolate course, and when they too are over-passed, and
he looks back upon their transit, which seemed so painfully
protracted, and, lo! all is changed, and _their_ flight also is now
but as an ended minute.

And yet what strange and sudden changes altering the affairs of men,
changing the hearts of mortals, yea, revolutionizing their whole
intellects, and over-turning their very natures--more than the
devastating earthquake or the destroying lava transforms the face of
the everlasting earth--have not been wrought, and again well nigh
forgotten within that little period.

Three years had passed, I say, over the head of Raoul de Douarnez--the
three most marked and memorable years in the life of every young
man--and from the ingenuous and promising stripling, he had now become
in all respects a man, and a bold and enterprising man, moreover, who
had seen much and struggled much, and suffered somewhat--without which
there is no gain of his wisdom here below--in his transit, even thus
far, over the billows and among the reefs and quicksands of the world.

His father had kept his promise to that loved son in all things, nor
had the Sieur d'Argenson failed of his plighted faith. The autumn of
that year, the spring of which saw Kerguelen die in unutterable agony,
saw Raoul de Douarnez the contracted and affianced husband of the
lovely and beloved Melanie.

All that was wanted now to render them actually man and wife, to
create between them that bond which, alone of mortal ties, man cannot
sunder, was the ministration of the church's holiest rite, and that,
in wise consideration of their tender years, was postponed until the
termination of the third summer.

During the interval it was decided that Raoul, as was the custom of
the world in those days, especially among the nobility, and most
especially among the nobility of France, should bear arms in active
service, and see something of the world abroad, before settling down
into the easier duties of dom