nto one complete whole.

During the quiet months that closed the year of the Commune I dwelt at
Hopton, Isabella being away, and Little Corton in the care of a
housekeeper. Leisure was thus afforded me for the task of piecing
together these links of the past.

It was hard at first to realise that those few moments passed on the
pierhead at Genoa did not form part of my illness and the dreamy
memories of that time. But having always been of a matter of fact mind
I allowed myself no illusions in this respect, and this strange detail
of an incomprehensible life forced itself upon my understanding at
length when the inexplicable became dimly legible.

In my native air I soon picked up strength, forgetting, in truth, my
wounds and illness before the shooting season. Nevertheless, I throw a
gun up to my shoulder less nimbly than I did before Miste's bullet
found its billet among the muscles of my arm.

Madame de Clericy and Lucille had returned to Paris, but, the former
wrote me, were anxious to get away from the capital, which no longer
offered a pleasant home to avowed Legitimists. Madame still entrusted
me with the management of her affairs, which I administered _tant bien
que mal_ by correspondence, and the harvest promised to be such a good
one as to set our minds at rest respecting the immediate future.

Alphonse Giraud passed a few days, from time to time, with the ladies,
but he being a poor correspondent, and I no better, we had but little
knowledge of each other at this time.

Madame, I observed, made but brief reference to Lucille now. "Alphonse
is with us," she would write, and nothing else; or "Lucille keeps well
and is ever gay," with which scant details I had to content myself.

Twice she invited me to pass some days, or weeks, if it could be so
arranged, at the Rue des Palmiers, and twice I refused. For in truth I
scarcely wished to meet Madame de Clericy until my chain was pieced
together and I could lay before her a tale of evidence that had no
weak link in it.

In the month of September I journeyed to Paris, staying there but two
days, and so arranging my movements that I met neither Madame de
Clericy and her daughter nor Alphonse. I succeeded beyond my
expectations in forging an important link.

"Perhaps, as you cannot leave your estates just now," Madame had
written, "you will come to us at La Pauline towards the end of the
vintage. Indeed, my friend, I must ask you to make an effort to do so,