ther she could forward a letter to
the Chateau Montauban in Champagne, or whether her father had any
correspondent in the vicinity who could send her the picture of a
beloved relative, which, in the haste of their flight to England, they
had most reluctantly left behind.

The note at once threw every thing else into the background. What were
invasions and armies--what were kings and kingdoms--to the slightest
wish of the being who had written this billet? All this I admit to be
the fever of the mind--a waking dream--an illusion to which mesmerism
or magic is but a frivolity. Like all fevers, it is destined to pass
away, or to kill the patient; yet for the time, what on earth is so
strange, or so powerful--so dangerous to the reason--so delicious to
the soul!

But, after the long reverie into which I sank, with the writing of
Clotilde in my hand, I recollected that fortune had for once given me
the power of meeting the wishes of this noble and beautiful creature.
The resemblance of the picture that had so much perplexed and
attracted me, was now explained. I _was_ in the Chateau de Montauban,
and I now blessed the chance which had sent me to its honoured walls.

To hasten to the chamber where I was again to look upon the exquisite
resemblance of features which, till then, I had thought without a
similar in the world, was a matter of instinct; and, winding my way
through the intricacies of galleries and corridors, loaded with the
baggage of the emigrant army, and strewed with many a gallant noble
who had exchanged the down bed of his ancestral mansion for the bare
floor, or the open bivouac, I at length reached the apartment to which
the captive general had been consigned. To my utter astonishment,
instead of the silence which I expected under the circumstances, I
heard the jingling of glasses and roars of laughter. Was this the
abode of solitude and misfortune? I entered, and found M. Lafayette,
indeed, conducting himself with the composure of a personage of his
rank; but the other performers exhibiting a totally different
temperament. A group of Polish officers, who had formerly borne
commissions in the royal service, and now followed the Emigrant
troops, had recognized Lafayette, and insisted on paying due honours
to the "noble comrade" with whom they had served beyond the Atlantic.
Hamlet's menace to his friend, that he would "teach him to drink deep
ere he depart," had been adopted in the amplest sense by those jo