His uncle accordingly left him; but instead of proceeding to change his dress, De Montigni covered his eyes with his hands, and gave himself up for a few minutes to bitter and anxious thought. Oh how many wild and tumultuous feelings passed through his bosom during that short space of time! and all were sad and painful. The contemplation of the future, the memory of the past, the consideration of the present, regret, apprehension, indecision, were all present to his mind at once; and, for some time, thought seemed one strange chaos of indistinct and gloomy forms, from which at length rose up one image more painful than all the rest. His mind rested upon Rose d'Albret, and upon the idea of losing her for ever. Remembrance brought her back as the companion of his boyhood; he recollected how she had shared his sports, how she had ridden by his side through the scenes around, how she had taken part in his pleasures and his fancies, how she had soothed him under any of the petty griefs of youth, how she had turned from him anger and reproof, when in the gay light-heartedness of early years he had offended the irritable gravity of age. She had always loved him he thought, and he had always loved her, with the tender and unselfish love of years when passion is unknown. He had ever thought her beautiful,--most beautiful; but it was the kindness, the affection, in her radiant eyes that gave them double light to him; and now he had seen her in the full loveliness of womanly perfection, he had beheld the same looks bent upon him from a face which might well inspire more ardent feelings; and yet he was even now to see her given to another,--now, at the very moment when he had most learnt to long for her himself. Often he had fancied in his boyish dreams that, at some future period she would be his own; that their mutual lives, through maturity and age, would pass in the same happy confidence, in the same warm affection, which had brightened their childhood. He almost believed that some one had told him so, that she had been originally destined for him; and, as his mind rested upon that thought, his disappointment became the more bitter. What was to be his future life then? to be cut off from all the joys of domestic life; to embrace that cold and stern profession which, in his church, excluded those who adopted it from all the warm relations of husband and father; to pass his days in the dull routine of formal services, or in the petty intrigues and artful man[oe]uvres which have too often disgraced the Roman hierarchy; to cast from him at once all the dreams and aspirations of young and energetic manhood; and, before his hair was grey, to clothe his mind with the chilly garmenture of age. He shrunk from the thought; but, when he recollected that Rose d'Albret was to be the wife of another, it seemed to him a matter of small moment how his after days were to be passed.