tty history of our travels and adventures in Paris, Dresden,
Leipsic, Brussels and other gay towns, but I will not. For myself all
places were alike to me, provided I was with Count Saxe or with
Francezka. I hoped eagerly that Francezka would send for me, knowing
that would mean some clue to Gaston Cheverny, but she did not. I had
from her three letters, however, in which her soul shone forth. In the
spring of 1738 we were at Paris again. The women were very troublesome
that year after Count Saxe, and a gay set of rival duchesses came near
driving him to drink. One night in May he came into my chamber at
midnight, and throwing himself on a chair, said:

"Babache, I am weary of this town of Paris, and there is a duchess or
two that I would as lief were somewhere else. But as they will not go,
I have bethought me of our errand to Brussels. We can travel slowly
through the pleasant French country in this month of May; we can stop
at the chateau of Capello and see that matchless Francezka, and for a
little while we can live like men, instead of courtiers. What do you
think of this?"

I thought it well; my heart leaped at the mention of the chateau of
Capello. It was arranged that we should not give the least hint where
we were going. In fact, I was instructed to say that we were going to
the Pyrenees, and the story took so well that both the duchesses sent
their private spies to Spain to find out what my master was doing
there. Meanwhile we were on the high road to Brabant.

No one was with Count Saxe except myself and Beauvais. We left Paris
on a spring morning, very like the one so many years before when I had
been led out to be shot. We traveled briskly, and at every step that
we left the duchesses behind my master's spirits rose. As we had
given out that this journey was to the Pyrenees, the ladies sent their
couriers with their love-letters in the wrong direction, and Count
Saxe did not get a single love-letter between Paris and Brussels, and
his health and spirits visibly improved. Trust a woman of rank for
hounding a man to death.

We sent word ahead to the chateau of Capello of our coming, and
planned to arrive about sunset. The country of Brabant is everywhere
beautiful, rich and well tilled, but the estate of Capello was the
most beautiful, the richest and the best tilled of any we saw.
Francezka had not increased the park land, rightly thinking she had no
right to reduce the arable land of the peasants, but s