assumed gaiety died out of it; it was as if a light had been
extinguished. She felt no wish to look at the landscape, no curiosity to
see the horseman who was galloping towards them at such a furious pace,
and, ensconcing herself in her corner, stared out before her at the
hindquarters of the post-horses, looking as blank as any Breton peasant
listening to his _recteur's_ sermon.

Suddenly a young man riding a valuable horse came out from behind the
clump of poplars and flowering briar-rose.

"It is an Englishman," remarked the Colonel.

"Lord bless you, yes, General," said the post-boy; "he belongs to the
race of fellows who have a mind to gobble up France, they say."

The stranger was one of the foreigners traveling in France at the time
when Napoleon detained all British subjects within the limits of the
Empire, by way of reprisals for the violation of the Treaty of Amiens,
an outrage of international law perpetrated by the Court of St. James.
These prisoners, compelled to submit to the Emperor's pleasure, were not
all suffered to remain in the houses where they were arrested, nor yet
in the places of residence which at first they were permitted to choose.
Most of the English colony in Touraine had been transplanted thither
from different places where their presence was supposed to be inimical
to the interests of the Continental Policy.

The young man, who was taking the tedium of the early morning hours on
horseback, was one of these victims of bureaucratic tyranny. Two years
previously, a sudden order from the Foreign Office had dragged him from
Montpellier, whither he had gone on account of consumptive tendencies.
He glanced at the Comte d'Aiglemont, saw that he was a military man, and
deliberately looked away, turning his head somewhat abruptly towards the
meadows by the Cise.

"The English are all as insolent as if the globe belonged to them,"
muttered the Colonel. "Luckily, Soult will give them a thrashing
directly."

The prisoner gave a glance to the caleche as he rode by. Brief though
that glance was, he had yet time to notice the sad expression which lent
an indefinable charm to the Countess' pensive face. Many men are deeply
moved by the mere semblance of suffering in a woman; they take the look
of pain for a sign of constancy or of love. Julie herself was so much
absorbed in the contemplation of the opposite cushion that she saw
neither the horse nor the rider. The damaged trace meanwhile had been