Clementina

"I am heart-broken," wrote Friederika, "but my fidelity to my

Chateaudoux has not faltered, nor will not, whatever I may be called

upon to endure. I cannot, however, be so undutiful as to accept my

Chateaudoux's addresses without my father's consent; and my mother, who

is of the same mind with me, insists that even with that consent a

runaway marriage is not to be thought of unless my Chateaudoux can

provide me with a suitable woman for an attendant."

These conditions fulfilled, Friederika was willing to follow her

Chateaudoux to the world's end. The comfortable citizen in the

snuff-coloured suit sat for some while over that letter with a strange

light upon his face and a smile of great happiness. The comfortable

citizen was Charles Wogan, and he could dissociate the obstructions of

the mother from the willingness of the girl.

The October evening wove its veils from the mountain crests across the

valleys; the sun and the daylight had gone from the room before Wogan

tore that letter up and wrote another to the Chevalier at Bologna,

telling him that the Princess Clementina would venture herself gladly if

he could secure the consent of Prince Sobieski, her father. And the next

morning he drove out in a carriage towards Ohlau in Silesia.

It was as the Chevalier Warner that he had first journeyed thither to

solicit for his King the Princess Clementina's hand. Consequently he

used the name again. Winter came upon him as he went; the snow gathered

thick upon the hills and crept down into the valleys, encumbering his

path. The cold nipped his bones; he drove beneath great clouds and

through a stinging air, but of these discomforts he was not sensible.

For the mission he was set upon filled his thoughts and ran like a fever

in his blood. He lay awake at nights inventing schemes of evasion, and

each morning showed a flaw, and the schemes crumbled. Not that his faith

faltered. At some one moment he felt sure the perfect plan, swift and

secret, would be revealed to him, and he lived to seize the moment. The

people with whom he spoke became as shadows; the inns where he rested

were confused into a common semblance. He was like a man in a trance,

seeing ever before his eyes the guarded villa at Innspruck, and behind

the walls, patient and watchful, the face of the chosen woman; so that

it was almost with surprise that he looked down one afternoon from the

brim of a pass in the hills and saw beneath him, hooded with snow, the

roofs and towers of Ohlau.