no sunset before his eyes, was to have the taste of
mortal life in the highest. He wondered how it was that he could have
waited so long for her since the first night of their meeting, and
he just distinguished the fact that he lived with the pulses of the
minutes, much as she did, only more fierily. The ceaseless warfare
called politics must have been the distraction: he forgot any other of
another kind. He was a bridegroom for whom the rosed Alps rolled out, a
panorama of illimitable felicity. And there were certain things he must
overcome before he could name his bride his own, so that his innate love
of contention, which had been constantly flattered by triumph, brought,
his whole nature into play with the prospect of the morrow: not much
liking it either. There is a nerve, in brave warriors that does not
like the battle before, the crackle of musketry is heard, and the big
artillery.

Methodically, according to his habit, he jotted down the hours of the
trains, the hotel mentioned by Clotilde, the address of her father; he
looked to his card-case, his writing materials, his notes upon Swiss
law; considering that the scene would be in Switzerland, and he was a
lawyer bent on acting within and up to the measure of the law as well as
pleading eloquently. The desire to wing a telegram to her he thought it
wise to repress, and he found himself in consequence composing verses,
turgid enough, even to his own judgement. Poets would have failed at
such a time, and he was not one, but an orator enamoured. He was a wild
man, cased in the knowledge of jurisprudence, and wishing to enter
the ranks of the soberly blissful. These he could imagine that he
complimented by the wish. Then why should he doubt of his fortune? He
did not.

The night passed, the morning came, and carried him on his journey. Late
in the afternoon he alighted at the hotel he called Clotilde's. A letter
was handed to him. His eyes all over the page caught the note of it for
her beginning of the battle and despair at the first repulse. 'And now
my turn!' said he, not overjoyously. The words Jew and demagogue and
baroness, quoted in the letter, were old missiles hurling again at him.
But Clotilde's parents were yet to learn that this Jew, demagogue, and
champion of an injured lady, was a gentleman respectful to their legal
and natural claims upon their child while maintaining his own: they were
to know him and change their tone.

As he was reading the let