Great, as may be imagined, was the real joy of the old, true-hearted servitors of the house, at finding their lord thus unexpectedly restored to them, at a time when they had in fact almost abandoned every hope of seeing him again. The same infernal policy which had thrust him so often, as it were, into the very jaws of death--which had intercepted all the letters sent to him from home, and taken, in one word, every step that ingenuity could suggest to isolate him altogether in that distant world--had taken measures as deep and iniquitous at home to cause him to be regarded as one dead, and to obliterate all memory of his existence. Three different times reports so circumstantial, and accompanied by such minute details of time and place, as to render it almost impossible for men to doubt their authenticity, had been circulated with regard to the death of the young soldier; and as no tidings had been received of him from any more direct source, the last news of his fall had been generally received as true, no motive appearing why it should be discredited. His appearance, therefore, at the castle of St. Renan, was hailed as that of one who had been lost and was now found--of one who had been dead, and lo! he was alive. The banc-loche of the old feudal pile rang forth its blithest and most jovial notes of greeting; the banner, with the old armorial bearings of St. Renan, was displayed upon the keep; and a few light pieces of antique artillery--falcons, and culverins, and demi-cannon, which had kept their places on the battlements since the days of the leagues--sent forth their thunders far and wide over the astonished country. So generally, however, had the belief of Raoul’s death been circulated, and so absolute had been the credence given to the rumor, that when those unwonted sounds of rejoicing were heard to proceed from the long-silent walls of St. Renan, men never suspected that the lost heir had returned to enjoy his own again, but fancied that some new master had established his claim to the succession, and was thus celebrating his investiture with the rights of the counts of St. Renan. Nor was this wonderful, for ocular proof was scarcely enough to satisfy the oldest retainers of the family of the young lord’s identity; and indeed ocular proof was rendered in some sort dubious by the great alteration which had taken place in the appearance of the personage in question. Between the handsome stripling of sixteen and the grown man of twenty summers there is a greater difference than the same lapse of time will produce at any other period of human life. And this change had been rendered even greater than usual by the burning climate to which Raoul had been exposed, by the stout endurance of fatigues which had prematurely enlarged and hardened his youthful frame, and above all by the dark experience which had spread something of the thoughtful cast of age over the smooth and gracious lineaments of boyhood.