Page:The Czar, A Tale of the Time of the First Napleon.djvu/323

Rh "'What more could I desire for him, or for myself?' I said. That was nearly all that passed between us. But it was enough. I am comforted concerning my father.

"I cannot write or think of aught else just now. My dear unknown father! So unfortunate! So young too—scarce older, when the storm burst upon him, than I am now. What agony he must have suffered! what desolation! Yet he kept his sorely-tried loyalty without a taint; only craving, as his last boon, leave to die for the sovereign who drove him from her presence with insult, and doomed him to ruin and disgrace. Surely his heart was true, whatever baseless, fantastic dreams of liberty and equality may have set his brain on fire. The Czar says he died a hero's death, and that he died for him. Thank God!

"My Clémence perhaps will wonder that I said nothing to the Czar about our future—about my plans, hopes, or prospects. Truly I had intended, if the opportunity offered, to have spoken of these. But to-day I could not—I could think of no subject save one. Forgive me this delay.

"It is late, but I am still sitting at my desk with that precious sketch before me which your father's hand transferred to paper, and your hand placed in mine. My dear mother's face seems to look upon me and to say, 'I too am comforted concerning all I love. Here or elsewhere they are in God's keeping. Never, even in their darkest days, did he wholly take away his loving-kindness from them.'

"To-morrow General Soltikoff is to tell me more. Not much more, I suppose. Few particulars of the life and death of a man degraded to the ranks are ever likely to be known. But had he told me what I know now, how different everything would have seemed to me to-night!

"Now it is not late, but early. That is really the light of dawn, our Northern dawn, which is stealing in pale and faint. I must put out my lamp and lie down, first thanking God for