Though, as we have endeavoured on more than one occasion to show, the Count de Morseiul was a man of strong imagination and of deep and intense feelings, yet he possessed qualities of other kinds, which served to counterbalance and to rule those dangerous gifts, not, indeed, preventing them from having their effect upon himself, paining, grieving, and wearing him, but sufficient to prevent imagination from clouding his judgment, or strong feeling from warping his conduct from the stern path which judgment dictated. He applied himself then to examine distinctly what were the probabilities of the future, and what was the line of conduct that it became him to pursue. He doubted not, indeed he felt strongly convinced, that Clémence de Marly would ultimately give her hand to the Chevalier d'Evran, to his friend and companion. He believed that, for the time, some accidental circumstance might have alienated them from each other, and that, perhaps on both sides, any warmer and more eager passion that they once had felt, might have been a little cooled; but still he doubted not, from all he saw, that Clémence would yet be his friend's bride, and the first part of his own task was to prepare his mind to bear that event with calmness, and firmness, and dignity, whenever it should happen. As his thoughts reverted, however, to the situation of his fellow Huguenots, and the probable fate that awaited them, he saw a prospect of relief from the agony of his own personal feelings in the strife that was likely to ensue from their persecution; and perhaps he drew a hope even from the prospect of an early grave. With such thoughts struggling in his breast, and with all the varied emotions which the imagination of the reader may well supply, Albert of Morseiul rode on till he reached the house appointed for his second resting place. Every thing had been prepared for his reception, and all the external appliances were ready to insure comfort, so that there was not even any little bodily want or irritation to withdraw his attention from the gloomy pictures presented by his own thoughts. With a tact in such matters which was peculiarly his own, Jerome Riquet took especial care that the dinner set before his master should be of the very simplest kind, and instead of crowding the room with servants, as he had done on a former occasion, he, who on the journey acted the part of major domo, waited upon the Count at table alone, only suffering another servant to carry in and remove the dishes. He had taken the precaution of bringing with him some wine from Poitiers, which he had induced the sommelier of the archbishop to pilfer from the best bin in his master's cellar, and he now endeavoured to seduce his master, whose deep depression he had seen and deplored during their journey, into taking more of the fragrant juice than usual, not, indeed, by saying one word upon the subject, but by filling his glass whenever he saw it empty.