al of their relations, and some of Enguerrand's
young friends not engaged in the sortie. One or two of the latter,
indeed, were disabled from fighting by wounds in former fields; they
left their sick-beds to bid him good-bye. Unspeakable was the affection
this genial nature inspired in all who came into the circle of its
winning magic; and when, tearing himself from them, he descended the
stair, and passed with light step through the Porte cochere, there was
a crowd around the house--so widely had his popularity spread among even
the lower classes, from which the Mobiles in his regiment were chiefly
composed. He departed to the place of rendezvous amid a chorus of
exhilarating cheers.

Not thus lovingly tended on, not thus cordially greeted, was that equal
idol of a former generation, Victor de Mauleon. No pious friend prayed
beside his couch, no loving kiss waked him from his slumbers. At the
grey of the November dawn he rose from a sleep which had no smiling
dreams, with that mysterious instinct of punctual will which cannot even
go to sleep without fixing beforehand the exact moment in which sleep
shall end. He, too, like Enguerrand, dressed himself with care--unlike
Enguerrand, with care strictly soldier-like. Then, seeing he had some
little time yet before him, he rapidly revisited the pigeonholes and
drawers in which might be found by prying eyes anything he would deny
to them curiosity. All that he found of this sort were some letters in
female handwriting, tied together with faded ribbon, relics of earlier
days, and treasured throughout later vicissitudes; letters from the
English girl to whom he had briefly referred in his confession to
Louvier,--the only girl he had ever wooed as his wife. She was the only
daughter of highborn Roman Catholics, residing at the time of his youth
in Paris. Reluctantly they had assented to his proposals; joyfully they
had retracted their assent when his affairs had become so involved;
yet possibly the motive that led him to his most ruinous excesses--the
gambling of the turf--had been caused by the wild hope of a nature, then
fatally sanguine, to retrieve the fortune that might suffice to
satisfy the parents. But during his permitted courtship the lovers
had corresponded. Her letters were full of warm, if innocent,
tenderness--till came the last cold farewell. The family had long ago
returned to England; he concluded, of course, that she had married
another.

Near to these lette