comfort him in his
failure, even though his triumph would only have aroused her scorn.

And time sped on. From the towers of the cathedral came booming the hour
of nine. The shadows in the narrow street were long and dark, only a
pale thin reflex of the cold light of the moon struck into the open
doorway and the white corridor, and detached de Marmont's pale face from
the surrounding gloom.

The Emperor's orders and because of a woman these could now no longer be
obeyed. If de Marmont had not seen Crystal on the cathedral steps, if he
had not followed her--if he had not allowed his passion and arrogant
self-will to blind him to time and to surroundings--who knows? but the
whole map of Europe might yet have been changed.

A fortune in London was awaiting a gambler who chose to stake everything
on a last throw--a fortune wherewith the greatest adventurer the world
has ever known might yet have reconstituted an army and reconquered an
Empire--and he who might have won that fortune was lying in the narrow
corridor of an humble lodging house--with a broken leg--helpless and
eating out his heart now with vain regret. Why? Because of a girl with
fair curls and blue eyes--just a woman--young and desirable--another
tiny pawn in the hands of the Great Master of this world's game.

The rain in the morning at Waterloo--Bluecher's arrival or Grouchy's--a
man's selfish passion for a woman who cared nothing for him--who shall
dare to say that these tiny, trivial incidents changed the destinies of
the world?

Think on it, O ye materialists! ye worshippers of Chance! Is it indeed
the infinitesimal doings of pigmies that bring about the great upheavals
of the earth? Do ye not rather see God's will in that fall of rain?
God's breath in those dying heroes who fell on Mont Saint Jean? do ye
not recognise that it was God's finger that pointed the way to Bluecher
and stretched de Marmont down helpless on the ground?

V

The arrival of M. le Comte de Cambray, accompanied by a doctor and two
men carrying an improvised stretcher, broke the spell of silence that
had fallen on this strange scene of pathetic failure which seemed but an
humble counterpart of that great and irretrievable one which was being
enacted at this same hour far away on the road to Genappe.

After the booming of the cathedral clock, de Marmont had ceased to
struggle: he accepted defeat probably because he, too--in spite of
himself--saw that the day of his idol's de