In the midst of all these events a small party left the camp of the King of France and took its way toward the city of Pavia. They went lightly armed, as if upon some expedition of pleasure, and, indeed, the country for fifty miles on the other side of the Po was quite safe and free from all adverse forces; but beneath the Apennines on either side lay the armies of the confederates, blockading every pass, and cutting off communication between Northern and Southern Italy, except by sea. Thus, with no offensive and but little defensive armour, the party rode securely on till they reached the gates of the Villa Rovera, where the two first horsemen dismounted and entered the gardens. The aspect of all things about the villa was greatly changed since Lorenzo and De Vitry had been there before. There was a stillness, a gloomy quietness about the place which somewhat alarmed them both. In the great hall was seated but one servant, and when they inquired of him for the old count and the young lady, he answered, "Alas! my lords, you do not know that his excellency is at the point of death." Such was the state of affairs when Lorenzo and his friend reached the dwelling of Blanche Marie, and what resulted from it must be told hereafter. CHAPTER XXXIII. In change lies all our joy; in change lies all our pain. Change is the true Janus whose two faces are always looking different ways. I know not whether it may please the reader, but I must change the place and the time, and change it so suddenly and so far as to pass over for a time, events not only interesting in themselves, but affecting deeply the fate of those who have formed the principal objects of my history. Yet it must be so, for there are inexorable laws established by judges against whom is no appealing, which limit the teller of a tale to a certain space; and were I to relate in detail all the events which occupied the two years succeeding the events last mentioned in this book, I should far transgress the regulations of the craft, and perhaps exhaust the patience of my readers. Those events, therefore, must be gathered from others which followed, and, indeed, perhaps this is the best, as it certainly is the shortest way of giving them to the public. There is a fine old chateau in the south of France, two towers of which are still standing, and hardly injured by the tooth of time. I have a picture of it before me by the hand of one who, born in lofty station and of surpassing excellence, was, as a beacon at a port of refuge, raised high to direct aright all who approached her, who lived not only honoured, but beloved, and has not left a nobler or a better behind. Her eye can never see these lines; her ear can never hear these words; but I would that this work were worthy to be a monument more lasting than brass, to write on it an epitaph truer than any that ever consoled the living or eulogised the dead.