On the fourth day Marie Louise came to the bartizan with her attendant; and on perceiving that I studiously avoided her, she promenaded there daily, and consequently I daily witnessed the little boy-husband toying with her, and hanging about 'his duchess,' for whom he evinced all the love of a child for a mother or for an elder sister; for Marie Louise was an incarnation of all gentleness and sweetness. Moreover she was kind and even affectionate to the boy, affecting to take an interest in his prattle, and in the playthings he hastened from time to time to show her; and more than once, when surprising them engaged in a game of romps, or playing with shuttlecock and battledore on the terrace, I have seen how Marie Louise grew deadly pale, and withdrew with a bow of sorrow and confusion. Then I would reflect, that in ten years more this child would be a youth of twenty, perhaps strong, brave, and impassioned; and that Louise would still be young and beautiful. My position became insupportable! I could not desert my command, nor retire from it until regularly relieved from head-quarters; but in a transport of bitterness I wrote to the Marquis of Gordon and to the Duke de Lavalette, praying them to appoint another captain of Lutzelstein, and allow me to rejoin my comrades in the field. Daily I looked for a reply; but weeks passed on, the brown autumnal woods were becoming bare and stripped; but no horseman came from the Rhine--no letter from the trenches before Seltz. Marie Louise--the ignes fatus, the hope of happier days, the star that had shone before me so long, the sole object of my thoughts--was living under my care, under the same roof with me; but separated from her by the peculiarity of our relative positions, we might as well have had the wall of China between us.