“Come,” said Monsieur de Sucy, “let us get on. A short hour’s march, and we shall reach Cassan in time for a good dinner.” “It is easy to see you have never loved,” replied the councillor, with a look that was pitifully comic; “you are as relentless as article 304 of the penal code.” Philippe de Sucy quivered; his broad brow contracted; his face became as sombre as the skies above them. Some memory of awful bitterness distorted for a moment his features, but he said nothing. Like all strong men, he drove down his emotions to the depths of his heart; thinking perhaps, as simple characters are apt to think, that there was something immodest in unveiling griefs when human language cannot render their depths and may only rouse the mockery of those who do not comprehend them. Monsieur d’Albon had one of those delicate natures which divine sorrows, and are instantly sympathetic to the emotion they have involuntarily aroused. He respected his friend’s silence, rose, forgot his fatigue, and followed him silently, grieved to have touched a wound that was evidently not healed. “Some day, my friend,” said Philippe, pressing his hand, and thanking him for his mute repentance by a heart-rending look, “I will relate to you my life. To-day I cannot.” They continued their way in silence. When the colonel’s pain seemed soothed, the marquis resumed his fatigue; and with the instinct, or rather the will, of a wearied man his eye took in the very depths of the forest; he questioned the tree-tops and examined the branching paths, hoping to discover some dwelling where he could ask hospitality. Arriving at a cross-ways, he thought he noticed a slight smoke rising among the trees; he stopped, looked more attentively, and saw, in the midst of a vast copse, the dark-green branches of several pine-trees. “A house! a house!” he cried, with the joy the sailor feels in crying “Land!” Then he sprang quickly into the copse, and the colonel, who had fallen into a deep reverie, followed him mechanically. “I’d rather get an omelet, some cottage bread, and a chair here,” he said, “than go to Cassan for sofas, truffles, and Bordeaux.” These words were an exclamation of enthusiasm, elicited from the councillor on catching sight of a wall, the white towers of which glimmered in the distance through the brown masses of the tree trunks. “Ha! ha! this looks to me as if it had once been a priory,” cried the marquis, as they reached a very old and blackened gate, through which they could see, in the midst of a large park, a building constructed in the style of the monasteries of old. “How those rascals the monks knew how to choose their sites!”