noble forest, realizing that I should never see those lands again, or
the neighboring crest where my friend the marquis slept.

We posted the distance to Paris in two days.

What the country was like or what towns we passed I could not this hour
declare with any certainty. At first making effort and groping numbly in
my mind, but the second day grasping determination, I formed my plans,
and talked them over with Skenedonk. We would sail for America on the
first convenient ship; waiting in Paris only long enough to prepare for
the post journey to a port. Charges must at once be settled with Doctor
Chantry, who would willingly stay in Paris while the De Chaumonts
remained there.

Beyond the voyage I did not look. The first faint tugging of my foster
country began to pull me as it has pulled many a broken wretch out of
the conditions of the older world.

Paris was horrible, with a lonesomeness no one could have foreseen in
its crowded streets. A taste of war was in the air. Troops passed to
review. Our post-carriage met the dashing coaches of gay young men I
knew, who stared at me without recognition. Marquis du Plessy no longer
made way for me and displayed me at his side.

I drove to his hotel in the Faubourg St. Germain for my possessions. It
was closed: the distant relative who inherited after him being an heir
with no Parisian tastes. The care-taker, however, that gentle old valet
like a woman, who had dressed me in my first Parisian finery, let us in,
and waited upon us with food I sent him out to buy. He gave me a letter
from my friend, which he had held to deliver on my return, in case any
accident befell the marquis. He was tremulous in his mourning, and all
his ardent care of me was service rendered to the dead.

I sat in the garden, with the letter spread upon the table where we had
dined. Its brevity was gay. The writer would have gone under the knife
with a jest. He did not burden me with any kind of counsel. We had
touched. We might touch again. It was as if a soul sailed by, waving its
hat.

"My Dear Boy:--

"I wanted you, but it was best you should not stay and behold the
depravity of your elders. It is about a woman.

"May you come to a better throne than the unsteady one of France.

"Your friend and servant,
Etienne du Plessy.

"Garlic is the spice of life, my boy!"

I asked no questions about the affair in which he had been engaged. If
he had wanted me to know he would ha