smell of powder; wishing to avoid the harrowing sight of
such dreadful carnage, I slackened my pace and was agreeably surprised
to find, at a turn in the path, that I had deserted my colors; I
listened and heard only the song of the bulfinch; I took a long breath
and breathed only the odor of the woods; I looked above the birches and
aspens for a cloud of smoke which would put me upon the track of the
combatants; I saw only the blue sky smiling through the trees; I was
alone; by one of those reactions of which I spoke, I sank insensibly
into a deep revery.

It was intensely hot; I threw myself upon the grass, under the shadow of
a thick hedge, and there lay listening to nature's faint whispers, and
the beating of my own heart. The joy that I had just felt in meeting
Edgar again, made the void in my heart, which friendship can never fill,
all the more painful; my senses, subdued by the heat, chanted in endless
elegies the serious and soothing conversation that we had had one
evening under your lindens. Whether I had a presentiment of some
approaching change in my destiny, or whether I was simply overcome by
the heat, I know not, but I was restless; my restlessness seemed to
anticipate some indefinite happiness, and from afar the wind bore to me
in warm puffs the cheering refrain: "She exists, she exists, you will
find her!"

I at last remembered that I had only been Madame de Meilhan's guest a
few hours, and that my abrupt disappearance must appear, to say the
least, strange to her. On the other hand, Edgar, whom I had
treacherously abandoned in the greatest danger, would have serious
grounds of complaint against me. I arose, and driving away the winged
dreams that hovered around me, like a swarm of bees round a hive,
prepared to join my corps, with the cowardly hope that when I arrived,
the engagement might be over and the victory won. Unfortunately, or
rather fortunately, I was unacquainted with the windings of the park,
and wandered at random through its verdant labyrinths, the sun pouring
down upon my devoted head until I heard the silvery murmur of a
neighboring stream, babbling over its pebbly bed. Attracted by the
freshness of the spot, I approached and in the midst of a confusion of
iris, mint and bindweed, I saw a blonde head quenching its thirst at the
stream. I could only see a mass of yellow hair wound in heavy golden
coils around this head, and a little hand catching the water like an
opal cup, which it af