"So you, too, have reached home in safety, _mon ami_!" he said. "You have returned from the grave indeed! Do you not know that we mourned you for dead? Allow me to share your table? I am a little shy of these super-aristocratic persons in times of peace; in the field the devil may care how many airs they put on; but here it is different. My commission feels new and strange to me; I am afraid at every moment that some one will say 'What right have you here? go out!'" Michel talked quickly, to conceal his agitation. Henri looked up and gave Michel his hand, smiling. "Yes, I found my way home somehow," he said; "yet for all the joy I feel in living I wish to God I had stayed beneath the Russian snows." Michel gazed at his friend in amazement. "Why--what mean you--what has happened?" he asked. "Michel, _mon ami_, you have been a good friend to me; you will sympathise; it will do me good to tell you; listen. Have I your permission to bore you with my tale of woe?" "Yes--speak--who knows, I may be able to counsel you, give you relief----" "No, it is impossible. Listen, my friend. You may remember our first meeting, when I lay wounded at Smolensk, I spoke confidentially--you will call it raving, I daresay--the subject, women; I confessed many things foolish and wicked; I spoke of one pure sentiment; of the love, strange and unfamiliar, because pure and disinterested, that I cherished for a very simple, very charming maiden whose name----" "Was Mathilde--was it not?--or Louise; one of the daughters of a _maître d'armes_." "Yes; Louise; you professed to know her--to have heard of her, at any rate. Well, let that pass then. It is strange, my friend, but my affection in that quarter has not vanished after the fashion of the wretched sentiment I have hitherto felt for other women, which has evaporated when the object is absent. On the contrary, it has increased in absence. I returned home to Paris inclined, certainly, to love the girl even more than I loved her at parting; a wonderful thing for me, Michel, _mon brave_, and very remarkable." Henri smiled ruefully at his friend. "Continue," said Michel, whose face looked pale, perhaps in sympathy with that of his companion. "Well, I return. I go, almost the first available moment, to see my charming one. I enter the house, my heart glowing with love and sweet anticipation. I am received by her father, who is cold, polite, long-winded, unsympathetic. I ask for Louise----" Henri paused; his fingers tapped upon the table; his voice had grown suddenly hoarse; there was actually moisture in his eyes. "Continue," murmured Michel, who wondered what was coming, for all this was a surprise to him, neither Dupré nor Marie having breathed a word of the visit of Baron Henri. "I ask for Louise," D'Estreville continued. "She is dead." "Dead?" exclaimed Michel, suddenly rising to his feet and pushing back his chair with a clatter. "Who said so? Why dead? What mean you?"