" muttered she, in a broken voice, while she turned her
head from me. "Adieu! Monsieur, adieu!"

"Adieu, then, since you wish it so, Minette! But whatever your secret
reason for this change towards me, you never can alter the deep-rooted
feeling of my heart, which makes me know myself your friend forever."

The more I thought of Minette's conduct, the more puzzled I was. No
jealousy on the part of Pioche could explain her abrupt departure from
Elchingen, and her resolve never to rejoin the Fourth. She was, indeed,
a strange girl, wayward and self-willed; but her impulses all had their
source in high feelings of honor and exalted pride. It might have been
that some chance expression had given her offence; yet she denied this.
But still, her former frankness was gone, and a sense of coldness, if
not distrust, had usurped its place. I could make nothing of it. One
thing alone did I feel convinced of,--she did not love Pioche. Poor
fellow! with all the fine traits of his honest nature, the manly
simplicity and openness of his character, he had not those arts of
pleasing which win their way with a woman's mind. Besides that, Minette,
from habit and tone of voice, had imbibed feelings and ideas of a very
different class in society, and with a feminine tact, had contrived to
form acquaintance with, and a relish for, the tastes and pleasures of
the cultivated World. The total subversion of all social order effected
by the Revolution had opened the path of ambition in life equally to
women as to men; and all the endeavors of the Consulate and the Empire
had not sobered down the minds of France to their former condition.
The sergeant to-day saw no reason why he might not wear his epaulettes
to-morrow, and in time exchange his shako even for a crown; and so the
vivandiere, whose life was passed in the intoxicating atmosphere of
glory, might well dream of greatness which should be hers hereafter,
and of the time when, as the wife of a marshal or a peer of France, she
would walk the _salons_ of the Tuileries as proudly as the daughter of a
Rohan or a Tavanne.

There was, then, nothing vain or presumptuous in the boldest flight of
ambition. However glittering the goal, it was beyond the reach of none;
and the hopes which, in better-ordered communities, had been deemed
absurd, seemed here but fair and reasonable. And from this element alone
proceeded some of the greatest actions, and by far the greatest portion
of the unhappiness, o