It is amongst the minor yet very real troubles of life that promptitude, courage, and self-denial so often appear to be wasted. The call to action reaches our ear: we spring up responsive, buckle on our armour, and hasten to the front,--only to hear the bugles sounding the retreat, and to find that the conflict has been adjourned _sine die_. So it happened to Ivan. He was stopped on his way to Vienna by tidings that the Chevalier Guard was now in Poland with the main body of the Russian army. To Poland accordingly he went; but only to linger in enforced idleness day after day, even week after week, first at Wiasma, and then at Prague. He could not dismiss the thought,--Might he not just as well have spent all this time with his bride at Versailles? He certainly might, except for the important consideration that it can never be just as well for a man to neglect his duty as to do it. Meanwhile the accounts from France added to his perplexity and uneasiness. Napoleon, received everywhere with open arms by the military, swept through the land like an unresisted torrent, and on the 19th of March entered the capital once more. Louis XVIII. abandoned it at his approach without striking a blow--a pusillanimity which made old Royalists like De Sartines and De Cranfort hang their heads with shame. It was natural that Ivan should feel the deepest anxiety about the household at Versailles, and for the sake of those so dear to him he could not be otherwise than thankful that a battle had been avoided, although on more public grounds it grieved him to the heart that Napoleon had succeeded so easily in establishing himself once more in Paris. During his stay in Prague, Ivan was cheered by a letter from Clémence, bearing the impress of her own true, tender, and courageous spirit. Henri wrote also, giving a more detailed account of public events; and Emile contributed a version of his own, which was by no means unwelcome. The student of the Polytechnique wrote as though the entire glory of bringing back the Emperor belonged to him and his schoolfellows; and he exhorted Prince Ivan not to be in the least uneasy about the family at Versailles, assuring him that they would enjoy _his_ powerful friendship and protection, with a naïve simplicity that gave his correspondent a hearty laugh. “But after all,” thought Ivan, “some atonement is due to the vanity of Emile, which used to suffer so often from the keen though polished thrusts of his Legitimist friends.”