f the first corps in the service?
Under what evil influence was I placed?

Such were the questions that forced themselves on me night and day; that
haunted my path as I walked, and my dreams at night. As the impression
grew on me, I imagined that every one I met regarded me with a look of
distance and distrust,--that each saw in me one who had forfeited his
fair name by some low or unworthy action,--till at last I actually
avoided the walks where I was likely to encounter the visitors of the
Palace, and shunned the very approach of a stranger, like a guilty
thing. All the brilliant prospects of my soldier's life, that a few days
back shone out before me, were now changed into a dreamy despondence.
The service I was employed on--so different from what I deemed became
a chivalrous career--was repugnant to all my feelings; and when the
time for visiting my pickets came, I shrank with shame from a duty that
suited rather the spy of the police than the officer of hussars.

Every day my depression increased. My isolation, doubly painful from the
gayety and life around me, seemed to mark me out as one unfit to know,
and lessened me in my own esteem; and as I walked the long, dark alleys
of the park, a weighty load upon my heart, I envied the meanest soldier
of my troop, and would willingly have changed his fortune with my own.
It was a relief to me even when night came--the shutters of my little
room closed, my lamp lighted--to think that there at least I was free
from the dark glances and sidelong looks of all I met; that I was alone
with my own sorrow,--no contemptuous eye to pierce my sad heart, and
see in my gloom a self-convicted criminal. Had I one, but one friend,
to advise with! to pour out all my sufferings before him, and say, "Tell
me, how shall I act? Am I to go on enduring? or where shall I, where can
I, vindicate my fame?"

With such sad thoughts for company, I sat one evening alone,--my mind
now recurring to the early scenes of my childhood, and to that harsh
teaching which even in infancy had marked me for suffering; now
straying onward to a vision of the future I used to paint so brightly to
myself,--when a gentle tap at the door aroused me.

"Come in," said I, carelessly, supposing it a sergeant of my troop.

The door slowly opened, and a figure wrapped in a loose horseman's cloak
entered.

"Ah! Lieutenant, don't you know me?" said a voice, whose peculiar tone
struck me as well known. "The Abbe d'Ervan,