style="font-size:15px;"> "Half across the kingdom, and you are spruce, brushed and dandified like one of Lafayette's aid-de-camps. Were the news you brought so unimportant as to let you dally at the toilet table?"
"Very important; but I feared that if I stepped out of the mud be-splattered postchaise in the palace yard, all disordered with travel, suspicion would be roused; the King had told me that you are closely guarded, and that made me congratulate myself on walking in, clad in my naval uniform like an officer coming to present his devoirs after a week or two on leave."
She squeezed his hand convulsively, having a question to put the harder to frame as it appeared so far from important.
"I forgot that you had a Paris house. Of course you dropped in at Coq-Heron Street, where the countess is keeping house?"
Charny was ready to spring away like a high-mettled steed spurred in the raw; but there was so much hesitation and pain in her words that he had to pity one so haughty for suffering so much and for showing her feelings though she was so strong-minded.
"Madam," he replied, with profound sadness not wholly caused by her pain, "I thought I had stated before my departure that the Countess of Charny's residence is not mine. I stopped at my brother Isidore's to change my dress."
The Queen uttered a cry of joy and slid down on her knees, carrying his hand to her lips, but he caught her up in both arms and exclaimed:
"Oh, what are you doing?"
"I thank you – ask me not for what! do you ask me for what? for the only moment of thorough delight I have felt since your departure. God knows this is folly, and foolish jealousy, but it is most worthy of pity. You were jealous once, though you forget it. Oh, you men are happy when you are jealous, because you can fight with your rivals and kill or be slain; but we women can only weep, though we perceive that our tears are useless if not dangerous. For our tears part us from our beloved rather than wash us nearer; our grief is the vertigo of love – it hurls us towards the abyss which we see without avail. I thank you again, George; you see that I am happy anew and weep no more."
She tried to laugh; but in her repining she had forgotten how to be merry, and the tone was so sad and doleful that the count shuddered.
"Be blessed, O God!" she said, "for he would not have the power to love me from the day when he pities me."
Charny felt he was dragged down a steep where in time he would be in the impossibility of checking himself. He made an effort to stop, like those skaters who lean back on their heels at the risk of breaking through the ice.
"Will you not permit me to offer the fruit of my long absence by explaining what I have been happy to do for your sake?" he said.
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