Heedless of all these warnings, on foot I rushed along the road, with my sword drawn; but night had now closed in, and objects had become vague and indistinct. I placed an ear on the ground to listen, but heard only the throbbing of my heart; my whole brain seemed to have become one huge pulse. Nicola, whom I might never see again, seemed before me, with all her thousand winning ways, her beauty and her gentleness, her modesty and timidity--Nicola subjected to the rude advances of this brutal and licentious lord! My heart grew sick! It was too much to think of--too exasperating a subject for contemplation; and half-blind with rage and grief. I rushed along the Nanci road, which stretched far away before me, lonely and silent in the light of the rising moon. Thus Nicola was lost or taken from me; and all the injunctions from the Countess, and my responsive promises, came back to my memory with a glow of shame and mortification, for, by my own neglect, I felt that I had forfeited my honour, and would be disgraced in the estimation of them both for ever. But these reflections were altogether secondary to the horror I experienced at the idea of her being subjected to captivity by such a man as Rudolf de Bitche; and now, when I had lost her, oh! how paltry did all my vile conventional scruples about her humble birth and position seem to me! Poor, beloved girl! And now the song of Bernard de Ventadour, the sweet minstrel who followed Elinor of Guienne, occurred to me:-- 'I thought my heart had known the whole Of love; but small its knowledge proved; For still the more my longing soul Loves on, itself the while unloved. She stole my heart, myself she stole, And all I prized from me removed; She left me but the fierce control Of vain desires for her I loved!' How lonely, voiceless, and silent seemed that moonlit landscape to me then! Nicola was indeed gone! * * * * * * CHAPTER XLIV. TAKEN PRISONER. In my cloak-bag at the auberge I had left the king's dispatches, addressed to Sir John Hepburn and to the Duc de Lavalette, together with the case containing the baton of a marechal of France, destined for the former; but I forgot everything, save the desperate hope of rescuing Nicola and of tracking her betrayers. I made a hundred vows of vengeance on De Bitche, whom I was one moment resolved to challenge to a solemn duel; and at another, to pistol without ceremony when or wherever I met him.