ow not if this will ever reach you,
for I am about to try a perilous thing, even to make Monsieur Doltaire
my letter-carrier. Bold as it is, I hope to bring it through safely.

You must know that my mother now makes Monsieur Doltaire welcome to our
home, for his great talents and persuasion have so worked upon her that
she believes him not so black as he is painted. My father, too, is not
unmoved by his amazing address and complaisance. I do not think he
often cares to use his arts--he is too indolent; but with my father, my
mother, and my sister he has set in motion all his resources.

Robert, all Versailles is here. This Monsieur Doltaire speaks for it.
I know not if all courts in the world are the same, but if so, I am at
heart no courtier; though I love the sparkle, the sharp play of wit and
word, the very touch-and-go of weapons. I am in love with life, and I
wish to live to be old, very old, that I will have known it all, from
helplessness to helplessness again, missing nothing, even though much be
sad to feel and bear. Robert, I should have gone on many years, seeing
little, knowing little, I think, if it had not been for you and for
your troubles, which are mine, and for this love of ours, builded in the
midst of sorrows. Georgette is now as old as when I first came to
love you, and you were thrown into the citadel, and yet in feeling and
experience, I am ten years older than she; and necessity has made me
wiser. Ah, if necessity would but make me happy too, by giving you your
liberty, that on these many miseries endured we might set up a sure
home. I wonder if you think--if you think of that: a little home away
from all these wars, aloof from vexing things.

But there! all too plainly I am showing you my heart. Yet it is so great
a comfort to speak on paper to you, in this silence here. Can you guess
where is that HERE, Robert? It is not the Chateau St. Louis--no. It
is not the Manor. It is the chateau, dear Chateau Alixe--my father has
called it that--on the Island of Orleans. Three days ago I was sick at
heart, tired of all the junketings and feastings, and I begged my mother
to fetch me here, though it is yet but early spring, and snow is on the
ground.

First, you must know that this new chateau is built upon, and is joined
to, the ruins of an old one, owned long years ago by the Baron of
Beaugard, whose strange history you must learn some day, out of the
papers we have found here. I begged my father not