Page:The Czar, A Tale of the Time of the First Napleon.djvu/273

Rh Since their last visit he had beguiled his hours of loneliness and pain by endeavouring to recall every word, every look of Henri's, as a drop to be added to the cup of comfort he was bearing to the lips of Henri's mother and sister. Very pleasant had the recognition been to him. Well could he imagine how the solitary invalid far away in the hospital at Vilna must have longed for those sweet faces, for the gentle touch of those kind hands. What would he give for such a mother, such a sister, to tend and care for him! But then his thoughts would revert once more, with a thrill of thankful joy, to the triumph of the Czar. How could he wish for anything else in the world when Alexander was in Paris, and the flames of Moscow were avenged?

At first Madame de Talmont seemed embarrassed, and a faint pink flush lent unwonted colour to her pale cheek. But Ivan's detailed description of his interview with Henri at Vilna arrested and held her with its absorbing interest.

"M. de Pojarsky," she said, uttering the name with a little hesitation, perhaps even reluctance, "if you have a mother living, I pray God to send some one to comfort her, as you have comforted me."

"Ah, madame," returned Ivan, "I have never known my mother; she died in my earliest infancy. I am tempted to envy M. de Talmont," he added with a smile.

Madame de Talmont looked at him with quickened interest. "May I ask," she said rather quickly, "does your father live? It is sad if one so young as you appear to be, stands alone in the world."

Ivan sighed. "I am alone in the world," he said. "But the strange thing is, that I cannot tell whether my father is living or dead."

"How is that?" pursued Madame de Talmont eagerly. But Clémence interposed, from a kindly desire to spare the young Russian a painful recital. "We can guess," she said—"we