Page:The Czar, A Tale of the Time of the First Napleon.djvu/293

 CHAPTER XXIX.

IVAN'S DINNER PARTY, AND WHAT FOLLOWED.

"Charity suffereth long, and is kind; charity envieth not; charity vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up, doth not behave itself unseemly, seeketh not her own, is not easily provoked."

HE day fixed upon for the expedition to Paris was bright and sunny, with that delicious and undefinable quality of exhilaration in the air which is nature's promise of summer hours to come. Such days often make sorrowing hearts yet more sorrowful, because the chords of hope and memory are intertwined, and no touch is light enough to stir the one without at the same time awakening the other. But the young and happy—those who are looking before them, not behind—find in the vague gladness of the world without the answer and the echo to voices equally glad and vague in the world within them. Earth, air, and sky alike seem to whisper, "Something good is coming. We know what it is, but we may not tell it yet."

Truly something good was coming to two young hearts that day; nay, it had come already, only they themselves were not quite conscious of it. The sharp eyes of the Polytechnic scholar discerned some things which were perhaps not equally clear to those more immediately concerned. Emile felt very angry with Ivan for what he chose to consider his presumption, and he vowed inwardly that, if he could, he would spoil his plans. It seemed a kind of propitiatory sacrifice to his fallen idol Napoleon to