Page:The Czar, A Tale of the Time of the First Napleon.djvu/310

300 the story of my life is wrought into the pattern of those flowers.—And now thine."

Henri and Clémence were soon threading their way through the crowded street, where the inhabitants of Versailles were making holiday. The brother and sister seemed to have changed positions, if not characters. Henri had passed through such terrible suffering of body and mind, that although the one might recover its strength and the other its tone, still there was something gone from him which could never return: he had left his youth behind him in the snows of Russia. On the other hand, a fresh spring-time of life and hope had come to Clémence; the garden of her sad and careful girlhood was beginning to rejoice and blossom as the rose. As in former days the grave and motherly elder sister had watched over and counselled the careless, happy-hearted boy; so now it became the office of the manly brother to protect and shield, perhaps to advise, the young and timid maiden trembling on the brink of the deeper joys of womanhood. Yet, though they had much to talk of, at first few words passed between them.

"We are late," Henri observed to Clémence, as he hurried her along. "Here they come!"

The Czar had already left the hospital, and the stately cavalcade was advancing slowly down the street on its way to the Avenue de Paris. "Let us come to these steps," said Henri, leading his sister quickly through the throng. "We shall see well here."

But the senses of Clémence were confused by the glittering train as it passed along. "Where is the Czar?" she asked in haste, making her voice heard with difficulty through the shouts and cheering that filled the air.

"There—in green and gold—on the white horse."

"Yes; I see him!" she cried, her eye following the direction of Henri's finger.

On either side of the Czar rode a handsome fair-haired boy,