Three years had elapsed--three years! That is a little space in the annals of the world, in the life of nations, nay, in the narrow records of humanity. Three years of careless happiness, three years of indolent and tranquil ease, unmarked by any great event, pass over our heads unnoted, and, save in the gray hairs which they scatter, leave no memorial of their transit, more than the sunshine of a happy summer day. They are, they are gone, they are forgotten. Even three years of gloom and sorrow, of that deep anguish which at the time the sufferer believes to be indelible and everlasting, lag on their weary, desolate course, and when they too are over-passed, and he looks back upon their transit, which seemed so painfully protracted, and, lo! all is changed, and _their_ flight also is now but as an ended minute. And yet, what strange and sudden changes altering the affairs of men, changing the hearts of mortals, yea, revolutionizing their whole intellects, and overturning their very natures--more than the devastating earthquake or the destroying lava transforms the face of the everlasting earth--have not been wrought, and again well nigh forgotten within that little period. Three years had passed, I say, over the head of Raoul de Douarnenez--the three most marked and memorable years in the life of every young man--and from the ingenuous and promising stripling, he had now become in every respect a man, and a bold and enterprising man, moreover, who had seen much and struggled much, and suffered somewhat--without which there is no gain of his wisdom here below--in his transit, even thus far, over the billows and among the reefs and quicksands of the world. His father had kept his promise to that loved son in all things, nor had the sieur d’Argenson failed of his plighted faith. The autumn of that year, the spring of which saw Kerguelen die in unutterable agony, saw Raoul de Douarnenez the contracted and affianced husband of the lovely and beloved Melanie. All that was wanted now to render them actually man and wife, to create between them that bond which, alone of mortal ties, man can not sunder, was the ministration of the church’s holiest rite, and that, in wise consideration of their tender years, was postponed until the termination of the third summer.