remely decorous with the duchess," I said to him; at which he
shouted with laughter, but owned I was right.

There was an open plaza in front of the schloss, with several mean
streets making off from it. Within was a courtyard of some extent,
with a few dismal trees growing, and around us was the stagnant green
water of the moat. Oh, what a dreary place that was!

I had mountains of writing to do, those devilish Courlanders
presenting endless petitions, protests, pieces, justifications, and
other rubbish, all of which had to be answered civilly. We kept up a
brisk correspondence with France when we could; but the Courlanders
have no notion that a courier is a sacred object, so a vast number of
our letters never got farther than Mitau.

Our communication from the rest of the world was scant and uncertain.
Even Mademoiselle Lecouvreur's letters rarely reached us, although we
knew she wrote faithfully and often to Count Saxe. We knew scarce
anything that was happening outside, except that Monsieur Voltaire was
in England, and Count Saxe hoped he would remain there.

There was one person of whom I thought daily and hourly, but could
hear no word of--Mademoiselle Francezka Capello. All I knew was that
she and Madame Riano had set forth from Paris, in great state, on
their travels. I was not the only person athirst for news of
Francezka. Gaston Cheverny was as eager. He wrote continually to his
brother Regnard imploring and demanding to know of Mademoiselle
Capello's welfare; but he admitted, with the utmost chagrin, that
Regnard, in those of his letters which were received, never so much as
mentioned Mademoiselle Capello's name, which led me to infer that
Regnard Cheverny knew all about her.

I have never known a man who early acquired a fortune that was not a
calculator and an acute reckoner of his own and other men's chances.
But Gaston Cheverny was not a calculator in the mean sense. The motto
of his house well described him. It ran, in the old French--_Un Loy,
Un Foy, Un Roy_. One faith was Gaston Cheverny's in all things. He was
full of youthful spirits, of ridiculous young daring, always wanting
to achieve the impossible, and of the sort, when he could not conquer
the world, to beat the watch. But those men are to be loved. Gaston
Cheverny had great capacity for love and romance. The image of
Francezka Capello had been deeply graven on his heart, and I saw what
one does not often see in a young man barely one and