not quitted the prince's
side since his return, and could inform Henri very accurately on the
subject.

On his arrival at Chateau-Thierry, the prince had at first entered upon
a course of reckless dissipation. At that time he occupied the state
apartments of the chateau, had receptions morning and evening, and was
engaged during the day stag-hunting in the forest; but since the
intelligence of Aurilly's death, which had reached the prince without
its being known from what source, the prince had retired to a pavilion
situated in the middle of the park. This pavilion, which was an almost
inaccessible retreat except to the intimate associates of the prince,
was hidden from view by the dense foliage of the surrounding trees, and
could hardly be perceived above their lofty summits, or through the
thick foliage of the hedges.

It was to this pavilion that the prince had retired during the last few
days. Those who did not know him well said that it was Aurilly's death
which had made him betake himself to this solitude; while those who were
well acquainted with his character pretended that he was carrying out in
this pavilion some base or infamous plot, which some day or another
would be revealed to light.

A circumstance which rendered either of these suppositions much more
probable was, that the prince seemed greatly annoyed whenever a matter
of business or a visit summoned him to the chateau; and so decidedly was
this the case, that no sooner had the visit been received, or the matter
of business been dispatched, than he returned to his solitude, where he
was waited upon only by the two old valets-de-chambre who had been
present at his birth.

"Since this is the case," observed Henri, "the fetes will not be very
gay if the prince continue in this humor."

"Certainly," replied the ensign, "for every one will know how to
sympathize with the prince's grief, whose pride as well as whose
affections had been so smitten."

Henri continued his interrogatories without intending it, and took a
strange interest in doing so. The circumstance of Aurilly's death, whom
he had known at the court, and whom he had again met in Flanders; the
kind of indifference with which the prince had announced the loss he had
met with; the strict seclusion in which it was said the prince had lived
since his death--all this seemed to him, without his being able to
assign a reason for his belief, as part of that mysterious and darkened
web wherein, f