more than that she had left London, and she
believed with an intention of visiting France. There her knowledge
ceased. I learned only further, that she had grown singularly fond of
solitude, was melancholy, and had no hesitation in expressing the
deepest dislike to the marriage proposed by her family. My enquiry was
at an end.

Hopeless as this intelligence was, it relieved me from the certainty,
which would have been despair. While Clotilde remained unallied to one
whom I could not avoid regarding as an uncongenial spirit, if not a hard
and tyrannical master, there was, at least, the chance of happiness
remaining for me in a world where every day brought changes more
extraordinary than our meeting. If there should be a war, my regiment
would be among the first to be employed, and France would inevitably be
the first object of a British expedition. The "march to Paris" had been
proclaimed by orators, exhibited in theatres, and chanted in street
ballads. All before us was conquest, and distinctions of every kind that
can captivate the untried soldier, glittered in all eyes. I was young,
ardent, and active. My name was one known to the table at which I seated
myself on my introduction to the Guards, and I was immediately on the
best footing with the gallant young men of a corps which has never
suffered a stain. I had even some peculiar sources of favour in their
eyes. I had actually made a campaign. This was more than had been done
by any man in the regiment. The Guards, always brave and always foremost
as they were, had not seen a shot fired for a quarter of a century. The
man who had heard bullets whistling about his ears, and had, besides,
seen the realities of war on the magnificent scale of continental
campaigning, possessed a superiority which was willingly acknowledged by
the gallant youths round us; and every detail of that most romantic
campaign, reluctantly given as it was by me, was listened to with
generous interest, or manly intelligence. And I had actually learned
enough, under the Duke of Brunswick, a master of tactics, to render my
services useful at the moment. The discipline of the British army was
not then, what it has since been, the model to Europe. The Englishman's
nature prompts him to require a reason for every thing; and there was no
peculiarly strong reason for the minute toil of foreign discipline, in
an army which had never been engaged since the American war. But other
days were now obviously