thought set my heart dancing within me. But the castle, as well as I
could remember, was a good ten miles off. To go there now was to arrive
at an unseemly hour, unkempt and weather-stained, before this uncle whom
I had never seen. My sensitive pride conjured up a picture of the
scornful faces of his servants as they looked out upon this bedraggled
wanderer from England slinking back to the castle which should have been
his own. No, I must seek shelter for the night, and then at my leisure,
with as fair a show of appearances as possible, I must present myself
before my relative. Where then could I find a refuge from the storm?

You will ask me, doubtless, why I did not make for Etaples or Boulogne.
I answer that it was for the same reason which forced me to land
secretly upon that forbidding coast. The name of de Laval still headed
the list of the proscribed, for my father had been a famous and
energetic leader of the small but influential body of men who had
remained true at all costs to the old order of things. Do not think
that, because I was of another way of thinking, I despised those who had
given up so much for their principles. There is a curious saint-like
trait in our natures which draws us most strongly towards that which
involves the greatest sacrifice, and I have sometimes thought that if
the conditions had been less onerous the Bourbons might have had fewer,
or at least less noble, followers. The French nobles had been more
faithful to them than the English to the Stuarts, for Cromwell had no
luxurious court or rich appointments which he could hold out to those
who would desert the royal cause. No words can exaggerate the
self-abnegation of those men. I have seen a supper party under my
father's roof where our guests were two fencing-masters, three
professors of language, one ornamental gardener, and one translator of
books, who held his hand in the front of his coat to conceal a rent in
the lapel. But these eight men were of the highest nobility of France,