To him, now that a year of hard work and hard fighting had passed over that awful day of misery and of shame, it seemed as if time had stood still; as if it had been but a few hours ago that he had started out--just as he did now--on that walk beneath the early morning sunshine, which had ended in such an appalling disaster--in the total wreckage of his life, of his newly-awakened youth, of every newly-risen hope of home and of happiness. Then, as now, the dew still lay upon the carpet of moss, the mountain-ash and the elder were in full bloom, and the mating birds had finished building their nests. Then, as now, the swallows circled swiftly overhead, and a lark rose from the ground at his feet and sang its joyful song of thanksgiving to God. But then the world held for him an exquisite being who was all tenderness and charm, who had lured him with her blue eyes, until he remembered that he, too, was young and he, too, had a right to love and happiness; the woods had held for him a nymph with feet like the petals of flowers, with sun-kissed hair which shone like living gold. A nymph! a creature of grace, of air, of light, whose fragrance was akin to a wilderness of roses, whose laugh was like the song of the lark, and whose arms were white and slender like the lilies! And when she stood before him or lay placid and drowsy in his arms, mysterious voices in the woods had murmured in his ear insidious promises of happiness to come. He, poor fool, had listened to those voices--sirens' voices, which are wont to lure the unfortunate mariner on life's ocean to his own destruction--to his own misery and undoing; sirens' voices which whispered that the exquisite fairy-like form which lay like a nestling bird in his arms would one day be his for always--that she would always snuggle up, just like this, against his shoulder; that he would one day cull a kiss from those perfect lips, that he would one day have the right to hold her and keep her and to guard her for always against every ill. Since then the voices of the sirens had turned to harsh and dismal screeching; the hopes of a year ago had turned to blank despair, and the savour of that triumphal aspiration turned to the dead sea fruit of unconquerable humiliation. Prussian cannon had disdained the prey which Ronnay de Maurel had offered with crazy recklessness; he had come back laden with honours, a broken-hearted and lonely man; and the birds still sang, the woods were still fragrant, the world of sunshine and of springtide, of flowering trees and full-blown roses mocked at his irretrievable beggary. IV