Auvergne's Cavalry.' I would willingly have
mentioned your name for promotion, to which your zeal and
activity would well entitle you; but deemed it better to
let your claim come before the Emperor's personal notice,
which an opportunity will, I trust, soon permit of its
doing. His Majesty, with a kindness which the devotion of a
life could not repay, has also interested himself personally
for me in a quarter where only his influence could have
proved successful. But the explanation of this I reserve for
your arrival. And now I request that you will lose no time
in repairing to Paris, where I shall expect to see you by
Tuesday.

Yours,

D'AUVERGNE, Lieut. 'General'

This strange paragraph puzzled me not a little; nor could I, by any
exercise of ingenuity, find out even a plausible meaning for it. I read
it over and over, weighing and canvassing every word, and torturing each
syllable; but all to no purpose. Had the general been some youthful but
unhappy lover, to forward whose suit the Emperor had lent his influence,
then had I understood the allusion; but with the old weather-beaten
officer, whose hairs were blanched with years and service, the very
thought of such a thing was too absurd. Yet what could be the royal
favor so lavishly praised? He needed no intercession with the Empress;
at least, I remembered well how marked the kindness of Josephine was
towards him in former times. But to what use guessing? Thoughts, by long
revolving, often become only the more entangled, and we lose sight of
the real difficulty in canvassing our own impressions concerning it. And
so from this text did I spin away a hundred fancies that occupied me the
whole road to Paris, nor left me till the din and movement of the great
capital banished all other reflections.

Arrangement had been made for my reception at the Rue de Rohan; but I
learned that the general was at Versailles with the Court, and only came
up to Paris once or twice each week. His direction to me was, to wait
for his arrival, and not to leave the city on any account.

With what a strange feeling did I survey the Palace of the
Tuileries,--the scene of my first moment of delighted admiration of her
I now loved, and, alas! of my first step in the long catalogue of my
misfortunes! I lingered about the gardens with a fascination I could not
account for; my destiny seemed somehow linked with the spot, and I