“So this is the life I craved,” exclaimed Mademoiselle de Verneuil, when she was left alone with Francine. “No matter how fast the hours go, they are to me like centuries of thought.”
Suddenly she took Francine’s hand, and her voice, soft as that of the first red-throat singing after a storm, slowly gave sound to the following words:--
“Try as I will to forget them, I see those two delicious lips, that chin just raised, those eyes of fire; I hear the ‘Hue!’ of the postilion; I dream, I dream,--why then such hatred on awakening!”
She drew a long sigh, rose, and then for the first time looked out upon the country delivered over to civil war by the cruel leader whom she was plotting to destroy. Attracted by the scene she wandered out to breathe at her ease beneath the sky; and though her steps conducted her at a venture, she was surely led to the Promenade of the town by one of those occult impulses of the soul which lead us to follow hope irrationally. Thoughts conceived under the dominion of that spell are often realized; but we then attribute their pre-vision to a power we call presentiment,--an inexplicable power, but a real one,--which our passions find accommodating, like a flatterer who, among his many lies, does sometimes tell the truth.
The preceding events of this history having been greatly influenced by the formation of the regions in which they happened, it is desirable to give a minute description of them, without which the closing scenes might be difficult of comprehension.
The town of Fougeres is partly built upon a slate rock, which seems to have slipped from the mountains that hem in the broad valley of Couesnon to the west and take various names according to their localities. The town is separated from the mountains by a gorge, through which flows a small river called the Nancon. To the east, the view is the same as from the summit of La Pelerine; to the west, the town looks down into the tortuous valley of the Nancon; but there is a spot from which a section of the great valley and the picturesque windings of the gorge can be seen at the same time. This place, chosen by the inhabitants of the town for their Promenade, and to which the steps of Mademoiselle de Verneuil were now turned, was destined to be the theatre on which the drama begun at La Vivetiere was to end. Therefore, however picturesque the other parts of Fougeres may be, attention must be particularly given to the scenery which meets the eye from this terrace.