e buglers, and
the trumpet call and the redoubled huzzas of a people thrilled him out
of his melancholy. With a sigh he gave over his private loves and poesy.
He breathed deep and his eyes flashed. And as the grand monarch and
good, he departed with the acclaim of posterity in his ears, conscious
that the superb figure he made was for History's contemplation.

At this time the Marquise d'Aumerle was half way up a ladder in the
garden. She was picking the fragrant china blossoms, tossing them down
to Berthe's apron, and humming "Mironton, mironton, mirontaine" in
blissful indifference to many things, to princes among them.

Nor was the other girl behind the hacienda shutters. Yet she, at least,
saw him ride away. High up in the chapel tower, between the bell and the
masonry, crouched a sobbing little figure. She gazed and gazed, with
straining eyes. Over there below, in front of her father's house, were
glittering swords and dazzling helmets, and the sheen of gilded
escutcheons on coach doors. And as the beautiful pageant wound its way
along the highroad, she watched in fawn-like curiosity. The sobs were
only involuntary. She was not thinking, then, that this was matter for
grief. Her dark eyes, that had been weeping, and were now so dry, held
to a certain one among the cavaliers, to the very tall and splendid one
with the slender waist, and they kept him jealously fixed among the
others, and were ever more impatient of the blurring distance. But when
finally he was lost for an instant in the general bright haze of the
company, and she could not be quite sure after that which was he, then
indeed the eyelids fluttered in a kind of despair. Yet only after the
last carriage had vanished under the giant banana leaves of the hill
beyond, did the tears come and tremble upon her lashes.

"He is married, the Emperor," she told herself, as though the fact were
that second written across the burning sky. At last, full, grim
comprehension was hers.

The stones of the tower glowed like a brazier in the sun, but the girl,
with her head on her arm against the parapet, shivered as with cold; and
a numbness at her heart grew heavier and heavier, like weighted ice.

Below her the barren knoll, where an hour before swarthy stolid hundreds
had crowded awaiting baptism, was lonely as the grave. The peons were
dispersing to their village down by the river junction, or to their huts
near the hacienda store, and on the air floated the fals