To tell how our gentleman passed that night; to tell how his sleep and his waking were one long dream, during which he lived over and over again in his mind all the details of the chimerical adventure which had placed in his keeping the most precious treasure that a miser could ever hide away beneath the wings of his heart; to tell of the plans he devised for making the future subservient to the needs of his love and the whims of his imagination; to set forth the arguments that he used to convince himself that he was doing what he ought,--would be an utter impossibility; for folly is a wearisome thing to any other mind than a fool's. Canolles fell asleep very late, if the feverish delirium which alternated with his waking moments can be called sleep; and yet the dawn had scarcely whitened the tops of the poplar-trees, and had not descended to the tranquil surface of the lovely ponds, where sleep the water-lilies, whose flowers open only in the sunlight, when he leaped out of bed, and, dressing himself in haste, went down into the garden. His first visit was to the wing occupied by the princess; his first glance at the window of her apartment. Either the princess was not yet asleep, or she was already awake, for a light, too bright to be produced by a mere night-lamp, shone through the closely drawn damask curtains. Canolles stopped short at the sight, which undoubtedly caused a number of insane conjectures to pass through his mind at the same instant, and, abandoning his tour of inspection, he stepped behind the pedestal of a statue which hid him from view; there, alone with his chimera, he began that everlasting dialogue of true lovers, who see the beloved object in all the poetic emanations of nature. The baron had been at his observatory for half an hour, or thereabout, and was gazing with unspeakable bliss at the curtains which any other than he would have passed indifferently by, when a window upon the gallery opened, and the honest face of Master Pompée appeared in the opening. Everything connected with the viscountess possessed the deepest interest for Canolles; so he turned his gaze away from the seductive curtains, and thought he could detect a desire on Pompée's part to establish communication with him by signs. At first Canolles was not sure that the signs were addressed to him, and looked about to discover if any other person was near; but Pompée, observing his uncertainty, accompanied his motions with a whistle, which would have been a decidedly unseemly method for a squire to adopt to attract the attention of the ambassador of his Majesty the King of France, had it not had an excuse in the shape of a small white object almost imperceptible to any other eyes than those of a lover, who immediately recognized in the white object a folded paper. "A note!" thought Canolles? "she's writing to me. What does that mean?"