tact.  I kept my eyes down, but they were ever fixed in the same direction, quite in vain.  The aunt came and went, and pulled us out, and showed us off, like caged monkeys; but the niece kept herself on the outskirts of the crowd and on the opposite side of the courtyard, and departed at last as she had come, without a sign.  Closely as I had watched her, I could not say her eyes had ever rested on me for an instant; and my heart was overwhelmed with bitterness and blackness.  I tore out her detested image; I felt I was done with her for ever; I laughed at myself savagely, because I had thought to please; when I lay down at night sleep forsook me, and I lay, and rolled, and gloated on her charms, and cursed her insensibility, for half the night.  How trivial I thought her! and how trivial her sex!  A man might be an angel or an Apollo, and a mustard-coloured coat would wholly blind them to his merits.  I was a prisoner, a slave, a contemned and despicable being, the butt of her sniggering countrymen.  I would take the lesson: no proud daughter of my foes should have the chance to mock at me again; none in the future should have the chance to think I had looked at her with admiration.  You cannot imagine any one of a more resolute and independent spirit, or whose bosom was more wholly mailed with patriotic arrogance, than I.  Before I dropped asleep, I had remembered all the infamies of Britain, and debited them in an overwhelming column to Flora.

The next day, as I sat in my place, I became conscious there was some one standing near; and behold, it was herself!  I kept my seat, at first in the confusion of my mind, later on from policy; and she stood, and leaned a little over me, as in pity.  She was very still and timid; her voice was low.  Did I suffer in my captivity? she asked me.  Had I to complain of any hardship?

‘Mademoiselle, I have not learned to complain,’ said I.  ‘I am a soldier of Napoleon.’

She sighed.  ‘At least you must regret La France,’ said she, and coloured a little as she pronounced the words, which she did with a pretty strangeness of accent.

‘What am I to say?’ I replied.  ‘If you were carried from this country, for which you seem so wholly suited, where the very rains and winds seem to become you like ornaments, would you regret, do you think?  We must surely all regret! the son to his mother, the man to his country; these are native feelings.’

‘You have a mother?’ she asked.

‘In heaven, mademoiselle,’ I answered.  ‘She, and my father also, went by the same road to heaven as so many others of the fair and brave: they followed their queen upon the scaffold.  So, you see, I am not so much to be pitied in my prison,’ I continued: ‘there are none to wait for me; I am alone in the world.  ’Tis a different case, for instance, with yon poor fellow in the cloth cap.  His bed is next to mine, and in the night I hear him sobbing to himself.  He has a tender character, full of tender and pretty sentiments; and in the dark at night, and sometimes by day when he can get me apart with him, he laments a mother and a sweetheart.  Do you know what made him take me for a confidant?’

She parted her lips with a look, but did not speak.  The look burned all through me with a sudden vital heat.

‘Because I had once seen, in marching by, the belfry of his village!’ I continued.  ‘The circumstance is quaint enough.  It seems to bind up into one the whole bundle of those human instincts that make life beautiful, and people and places dear—and from which it would seem I am cut off!’

I rested my chin on my knee and looked before me on the ground.  I had been talking until then to hold her; but I was now not sorry she should go: an impression is a thing so delicate to produce and so easy to overthrow!  Presently she seemed to make an effort.

‘I will take this toy,’ she said, laid a five-and-sixpenny piece in my hand, and was gone ere I could thank her.

I retired to a place apart near the ramparts and behind a gun.  The beauty, the expression of her eyes, the tear that had trembled there, the compassion in her voice, and a kind of wild elegance that consecrated the freedom of her movements, all combined to enslave my imagination and inflame my heart.  What had she said?  Nothing to signify; but her eyes had met mine, and the fire they had kindled burned inextinguishably in my veins.  I loved her; and I did not fear to hope.  Twice I had spoken with her; and in both interviews I had been well inspired, I had engaged her sympathies, I had found words that she must remember, that would ring in her ears at night upon her bed.  What mattered if I were half shaved and my clothes a caricature?  I was still a man, and I had drawn my image on her memory.  I was still a man, and, as I trembled to realise, she was still a woman.  Many waters cannot quench love; and love, which is the law of the world, was on my side.  I closed my eyes, and she sprang up on the background of the darkness, more beautiful than in life.  ‘Ah!’ thought I, ‘and you too, my dear, you too must carry away with you a picture, that you are still to behold again and still to embellish.  In the darkness of night, in the streets by day, still you are to have my voice and face, whispering, making love for me, encroaching on your shy heart.  Shy as your heart is, it is lodged there—I am lodged there; let the hours do their office—let time continue to draw me ever in more lively, ever in more insidious colours.’  And then I had a vision of myself, and burst out laughing.

A likely thing, indeed, that a beggar-man, a private soldier, a prisoner in a yellow travesty, was to awake the interest of this fair girl!  I would not despair; but I saw the game must be played fine and close.  It must be my policy to hold myself before her, always in a pathetic or pleasing attitude; never to alarm or startle her; to keep my own secret locked in my bosom like a story of disgrace, and let hers (if she could be induced to have one) grow at its own rate; to move just so fast, and not by a hair’s-breadth any faster, than the inclination of her heart.  I was the man, and yet I was passive, tied by the foot in prison.  I could not go to her; I must cast a spell upon her at each visit, so that she should return to me; and this was a matter of nice management.  I had done it the last time—it seemed impossible she should not come again after our interview; and for the next I had speedily ripened a fresh plan.  A prisoner, if he has one great disability for a lover, has yet one considerable advantage: there is nothing to distract him, and he can spend all his hours ripening his love and preparing its manifestations.  I had been then some days upon a piece of carving,—no less than the emblem of Scotland, the Lion Rampant.  This I proceeded to finish with what skill I was possessed of; and when at last I could do no more to it (and, you may be sure, was already regretting I had done so much), added on the base the following dedication.—

À LA BELLE FLORA
le prisonnier reconnaissant
A. d. St.  Y. d. K.

I put my heart into the carving of these letters.  What was done with so much ardour, it seemed scarce possible that any should behold with indifference; and the initials would at least suggest to her my noble birth.  I thought it better to suggest: I felt that mystery was my stock-in-trade; the contrast between my rank and manners, between my speech and my clothing, and the fact that she could only think of me by a combination of letters, must all tend to increase her interest and engage her heart.

This done, there was nothing left for me but to wait and to hope.  And there is nothing further from my character: in love and in war, I am all for the forward movement; and these days of waiting made my purgatory.  It is a fact that I loved her a great deal