of
meadows, vineyards, gardens, lakes, and rivers, and of cattle
feeding on a thousand hills,--among the graves of millions of men,
among the works of heroes and of martyrs, in the land of mighty towns,
of palaces, of masters, and of slaves, where a great king is
building the great palace which shall witness, centuries hence, the
dire humiliation of his race.

Of all the crowds and companies that hurry to and fro from one end
of the land to the other, Elizabeth seeks only two persons. It is
not to her father's native town that she is drawn by the superior
attraction. She passes Chalons in the moonlight. When the coach
stops at the inn-door for a change of horses, she keeps her place,
--she acts not with the quicker beating of her heart. She looks about
her as they drive through the silent streets,--out on the moonlit
landscape when they have passed the borders of the town; she sees
the church-towers, and the old buildings, and the river whose
windings she has heard described so often by the voices that once
talked of love all along its borders. Chalons is dear to her; she
looks back with tearful longing when the driver hurries on his
horses as they pass into the open country. But she has no right to
wait on her own pleasure,--to verify her parents' calculations when
they talk together, by the fireside in Foray, of her journeying
through Fatherland.

No,--each sunrise appoints him one more day of imprisonment and exile!
Every sunset leaves him to one more night of cruel dreams which
morning shall deride! And while this can be said, what has Chalons,
or any other spot on earth, that it should lure her into rest?

The higher powers sometimes convey their messages and do their work
after a prosaic fashion. It was no uncommon thing for a young girl
in neat raiment to stand waiting admittance before the door of the
Chateau Desperiers. Hospitality was called upon in those days not so
often, perhaps, as benevolence; and for its charity the chateau had
a reputation far and wide; the expectation of the poor perished only
in fruition there.

Into the library of this ancient mansion Elizabeth Montier was
ushered by the old gray servant. There she might wait the return of
his mistress; at what hour the return should be anticipated he could
not undertake to say. His counsel to the stranger was, that she had
better return at a later hour; but when Elizabeth said it was
impossible, that she had come from a great distance to see t