to clasp my sister in my
arms, and burning to tell her all my deeds and all my dangers. She met
me with her old affection; but how altered in its form! Her gay and
girlish lightness, the very soul of buoyant pleasure, was gone; and in
its place a mild, sad smile played upon her lip, and a deep, thoughtful
look was in her dark brown eye. She looked not less beautiful,--no, far
from it; her loveliness was increased tenfold. But the disappointment
smote heavily on my heart. I looked about me like one seeking for
some explanation; and there stood Claude--pale, still, and
motionless--before me: the very look she wore reflected in his calm
features; her very smile was on his lips. In an instant the whole truth
flashed across me: she loved him.

"There are thoughts which rend us, as lightning does the rock, opening
new surfaces that lay hid since the Creation, and tearing our fast-knit
sympathies asunder like the rent granite: mine was such. From that hour
I hated him; the very virtues that had, under happier circumstances,
made us like brothers, but added fuel to the flame. My rival, he had
robbed me of my sister;--he had left me without that one great prize
I owned on earth; and all that I had dared and won seemed poor, and
barren, and worthless, since she no longer valued it.

"That very night I wrote a letter to the First Consul. I knew the ardent
desire he possessed to attach to Josephine's suite such members of the
old aristocracy as could be induced to join it. He had more than
once hinted to me that the fame of my sister's beauty had reached
the Tuileries; that with such pretensions as hers, the seclusion of a
chateau in Provence was ill suited to her. I stated at once my wish
that she might be received as one of the Ladies of the Court, avowing
my intention to afford her any sum that might be deemed suitable to
maintain her in so exalted a sphere. This, you are not aware, is the
mode by which the members of a family express to the consul that they
surrender all right and guardianship in the individual given, tendering
to him full power to dispose of her in marriage, exactly as though he
were her own father.

"Before day broke my letter was on its way to Paris; in less than a week
came the answer, accepting my proposal in the most flattering terms,
and commanding me to repair to the Tuileries with my sister, and take
command of a regiment d' elite then preparing for service.

"I may not dwell on the scene that fol