I would try to conquer my passion, I thought, or die. I am afraid the idea of death was uppermost from the beginning, for before we had reached the end of our first day's journey, a dream, of a bright but painful nature, flitted frequently before my imagination. The path of glory and honour I thought was before me, and in the same path lay death, who, with his icy hand, would soon cool all the feverish burning of my heart. How bright, then, would it not be, I asked myself, to out-do in the field all that man had ever done, and to have it told to Laura de Villardin, that I had won immortal honour, and died upon the bed of glory? She would weep for me, I fancied, and her father would weep; and if the love I bore her were ever discovered, it would then but serve to shed a brighter light upon my memory, rather than throw a shadow on my name. CHAPTER XXXIII. It may easily be conceived that such reveries as those which occupied me during the rest of the journey, produced a sensible effect upon my external demeanour. Men may conceal great schemes and mighty designs, and all those enterprises in which the mind alone is concerned may be hidden by firmness, or covered over by art, but the deep feelings and intense passions of the heart almost always betray their workings by some external sign. It was Clement de la Marke who first perceived the alteration, and, hanging upon me affectionately, he inquired what made me so sad. Ere long it caught the attention of Monsieur de Villardin himself; and, without the slightest suspicion of its cause, he spoke of my unusual gravity as if it had arisen from disappointment in regard to the governorship of Binches, and tried to console me by promising to use every effort to obtain for me a just compensation. Each new instance of his kindness, far from giving me any relief, only served to make me feel more poignantly, that even, did no other circumstances exist to deprive my love of even a chance of success, gratitude to him should teach me to view it with despair. Every thought, every remembrance, showed me more and more strongly that my passion was hopeless; and yet every feeling assured me that that passion was unconquerable, and could never be forgotten. My buoyant heart, which I had thought nothing could overwhelm, completely sunk under the tide of sad thoughts and bitter feelings that overflowed in my bosom during our journey to Paris; and, when we arrived in the capital, I was as reckless a human being as ever despair drove to vice or to folly. What might have been the consequences I cannot tell, for no man should ever trust himself in such a state of mind, had it not been immediately necessary to join the army, and to quit a place in the debaucheries of which I might, perhaps, have sought relief from the agony that preyed upon my heart.