But there were one or two words which Schomberg had dropped accidentally, and which it would seem, from what we have told before, ought not to have produced such painful and bitter feelings in the breast of Albert of Morseiul as they did produce. They were those words which referred to the prohibition about to be decreed against the marriages of Protestants and Catholics. What was it to him, he asked himself, whether Catholics and Protestants might or might not marry? Was not his determination taken with regard to the only person whom he could have ever loved? and did it matter that another barrier was placed between them, when there were barriers impassable before. But still he felt the announcement deeply and painfully; reason had no power to check and overcome those sensations; and oppressed and overloaded as his mind then was, it wandered vaguely from misery to misery, and seemed to take a pleasure in calling up every thing that could increase its own pain and anguish. When he had thus ridden along for somewhat more than two miles, he suddenly heard a horn winded lowly in the distance, and, as he fancied, the cry of dogs. It called to his mind his promise to Clémence de Marly. He felt that his frame of mind was in strange contrast with a gay hunting scene. Yet he had promised to go as soon as ever he was free, and he was not a man to break his promise, even when it was a light one. He turned his horse's head, then, in the direction of the spot from which the sound seemed to proceed, still going on slowly and gloomily. A moment after he heard the sounds again. The memory of happy days, and of his old forest sports, came upon him, and he made a strong effort against the darker spirit in his bosom. "I will drive these gloomy thoughts from me," he said, "if it be but for an hour; I will yet know one bright moment more. For this day I will be a boy again, and to-morrow I will cast all behind me, and plunge into the stream of care and strife!" As he thus thought he touched his horse with the spur; the gallant beast bounded off like lightning; the cry of the hounds, the sound of the horns came nearer and nearer; and in a few moments more the Count came suddenly upon a relay of horses and dogs, established upon the side of a hill, as was then customary, for the purpose of giving fresh vigour to the chase when it had been abated by weariness. "Is the deer expected to pass here?" demanded the Count, speaking to one of the _veneurs_, and judging instantly, by his own practised eye, that it would take another direction. "The young Marquis Hericourt thought so," replied the man, "but he knows nothing about it."