Page:The Czar, A Tale of the Time of the First Napleon.djvu/230

220 his comrades, that there was no God, no Being who shaped the destinies of the human race. Practically, at least, there was none for him; none to whom it mattered whether he lived or died. Then the whole subject would pass from him and be forgotten in the absorbing interest of his quest for food. Something to allay the pangs of hunger had to be sought for, very much as the wild beast seeks for its prey.

How long this dreary life in death continued Henri never knew. But it had an end at last, like all suffering on this side of the grave. One day he found himself in what was evidently the melancholy and abandoned ruin of a once beautiful pleasure-ground. The pitiless frost had done its part to blight and to destroy; but the yet more pitiless hand of man had left its deeper traces. A castle, once fit for a royal residence, but now dismantled and partly burned, completed the picture of desolation.

All at once, as revealed by a lightning flash, Henri recalled the past. Could this indeed be Zakret—the splendid summer residence, with beautiful gardens, which the Czar had purchased just before the war? Only six months had passed since Henri wandered with genuine pleasure amidst its shady walks, and admired its magnificent conservatories filled with rare exotics, its terraces gay with the bloom of a thousand summer flowers. He even remembered the exasperation he had felt at the conduct of his fellow-soldiers, who wasted all that wealth of beauty with reckless, malicious hands, because it belonged to their enemy the Czar. "He is well avenged," thought Henri. "We did not dream that he would have proved himself so strong."

Another thought came then. Zakret was close to Vilna, the goal for the present of his weary wanderings. The idea lent his worn frame a momentary strength; he would get up, and go there immediately. He had thrown himself upon a seat—some broken masonry belonging to what had once been a