On his arrival at Chateau-Thierry, the prince had at first entered upon a course of reckless dissipation. At that time he occupied the state apartments of the chateau, had receptions morning and evening, and was engaged during the day stag-hunting in the forest; but since the intelligence of Aurilly's death, which had reached the prince without its being known from what source, the prince had retired to a pavilion situated in the middle of the park. This pavilion, which was an almost inaccessible retreat except to the intimate associates of the prince, was hidden from view by the dense foliage of the surrounding trees, and could hardly be perceived above their lofty summits, or through the thick foliage of the hedges. It was to this pavilion that the prince had retired during the last few days. Those who did not know him well said that it was Aurilly's death which had made him betake himself to this solitude; while those who were well acquainted with his character pretended that he was carrying out in this pavilion some base or infamous plot, which some day or another would be revealed to light. A circumstance which rendered either of these suppositions much more probable was, that the prince seemed greatly annoyed whenever a matter of business or a visit summoned him to the chateau; and so decidedly was this the case, that no sooner had the visit been received, or the matter of business been dispatched, than he returned to his solitude, where he was waited upon only by the two old valets-de-chambre who had been present at his birth. "Since this is the case," observed Henri, "the fetes will not be very gay if the prince continue in this humor." "Certainly," replied the ensign, "for every one will know how to sympathize with the prince's grief, whose pride as well as whose affections had been so smitten." Henri continued his interrogatories without intending it, and took a strange interest in doing so. The circumstance of Aurilly's death, whom he had known at the court, and whom he had again met in Flanders; the kind of indifference with which the prince had announced the loss he had met with; the strict seclusion in which it was said the prince had lived since his death--all this seemed to him, without his being able to assign a reason for his belief, as part of that mysterious and darkened web wherein, for some time past, the events of his life had been woven. "And," inquired he of the ensign, "it is not known, you say, how the prince became acquainted with the news of the death of Aurilly?" "No." "But surely," he insisted, "people must talk about it?" "Oh! of course," said the ensign; "true or false, you know, people always will talk." "Well, then, tell me what it is."