As is often the case with people of violent and impressionable natures, the Princess Catherine seldom saw things long in the same light. Though her thoughts were sorrowfully fastened on one subject in consequence of the tragical events that so suddenly threw a dark, ominous veil over a life hitherto so smiling, she found means of giving a thousand different shades to her misfortune, and it was not always easy to follow her in the fitful turns of her grief. What consoled her one day was a source of irritation the next: what she affirmed in the morning, she vehemently denied in the evening. Sometimes she expressed her fears on purpose that they might be opposed; at other times, she burst into tears at the slightest contradiction, and, if they endeavored to reassure her, she accused them of cruelty and indifference to her troubles. In consequence of one of these sudden fluctuations, the day following the arrival of the Marquis Adelardi’s letter which had seemed so consoling, Fleurange, at the hour of her usual visit, found her abandoned to the deepest dejection. Everything had assumed a new aspect, or perhaps it would be more just to say that everything now wore the terrible aspect of truth. And was it really enough that her idolized son was delivered from death? Was not the prospect she now dwelt on almost as fearful to bear? He—George!—her son!—in her eyes the perfect model of manly beauty, elegance, and nobleness of character, clad in the frightful garb of a criminal!—and going alone amid that wretched crowd to that dreary region, where the hardest and most humiliating labor awaited him, without even the consoling voice of a friend to encourage him, to take him by the hand, to love him, and to tell him so! “Oh!” she exclaimed, in that accent which is as different from every other, as the grief of a mother differs from every other grief—“oh! feeble, ill, and exhausted as I am, why cannot I accompany him? It really seems to me, Gabrielle, if I were allowed, I should find strength, I should have the courage to go. I would start, I would go and share his wretched existence, I would participate in all the severities of so frightful a life, and by dint of affection I would make it endurable for him!” This energetic cry of disinterested affection—its evident sincerity—was so rare a thing with the princess that it was the more affecting. Pale, silent, and motionless before her, Fleurange listened with an emotion that prevented her uttering the words that hung on her trembling lips. The poor princess was sobbing aloud, with both hands to her face, apparently exhausted by her own vehemence, when Fleurange, suddenly kneeling beside her, said in a low tone: “Do you remember, princess, the promise you exacted from your son, one evening?” The princess raised her head with surprise and a shade of resentment: “What do you mean? Do you wish to reproach me at such a time? The moment is well chosen, but such a thing from you, Gabrielle, surprises me!”