What then could be the result, he asked himself, when a leader, whose principle was ambition, took upon him to guide a fierce and lawless multitude, composed of nobles whose motive was selfishness, of priests whose spirit was fanaticism, and of a rabble whose objects were licentiousness, bloodshed, and plunder? The answer was not difficult; and, as he turned and mounted the staircase, amidst the crowd of lacqueys and attendants who stared at his thoughtful and abstracted demeanour without his noticing their presence, he determined to proceed to the royal camp as early as might be on the following morning, doubting not that, whatever might be the vices and the follies it presented to his sight, he should there find the path which led to his country's welfare, and, he trusted, also to his own peace of mind. Passing the doors of the saloons, he proceeded to that part of the house in which was situated the apartments that had been assigned to him; and, sending for his master of the horse--a common officer at that time, in the houses of the principal French nobility--he directed him to have everything prepared to quit Paris by daybreak on the following morning. The earliness of the hour which he thus appointed was not dictated by any apprehension that Mayenne would endeavour to impede his departure; but, his resolution being taken, and his opinion fixed by the most favourable view that could be afforded him of the party of the League itself, he wished to avoid, as far as possible, anything like solicitation; and he likewise desired neither to explain his feelings, nor reason upon his motives, in the conduct he was about to pursue regarding Eugenie de Menancourt. His sensations, indeed, upon the subject were so painful in themselves, that St. Real did not wish either to speak of or to dwell upon them. Arguing, with the usual simplicity of his nature, that, where our wishes and our duties are at variance, it is better to employ our thoughts in performing the duties, than to give them up to the hard task of combating the wishes--in which combat they are but too often defeated--he prepared to occupy all the energies of his mind in the attempt to serve his country, and to benefit to the utmost of his power the party he had determined to espouse, leaving his cousin to pursue his suit towards Eugenie de Menancourt as best he might, but endeavouring to serve him therein by pointing his efforts to nobler objects than had hitherto employed them, and by taking care that all he did should be placed in a fairer light than that in which the levity and somewhat vain indifference of d'Aubin had hitherto permitted his own actions to appear.