that girl always. Ha! do you hear me? Her letter may sting, it shall
not dupe. Strangers? Poor fool! You see plainly she was nailed down to
write the thing. This letter is a flat lie. She can lie--Oh! born to
the art! born to it!--lies like a Saint tricking Satan! But she says she
has left the city. Now to find her!'

He began marching about the room with great strides. 'I 'll have the
whole Continent up; her keepers shall have no rest; I 'll have them by
the Law Courts; and by stratagem, and, if law and cunning fail, force.
I have sworn it. I have done all that honour can ask of a man; more than
any man, to my knowledge, would have done, and now it's war. I declare
war on them. They will have it! I mean to take that girl from them--
snatch or catch! The girl is my girl, and if there are laws against my
having my own, to powder with the laws! Well, and do you suppose me
likely to be beaten? Then Cicero was a fiction, and Caesar a people's
legend. Not if they are history, and eloquence and commandership have
power over the blood and souls of men. First, I write to her!'

His friend suggested that he knew not where she was. But already the pen
was at work, the brain pouring as from a pitcher.

Writing was blood-letting, and the interminable pages drained him of his
fever. As he wrote, she grew more radiant, more indistinct, more
fiercely desired. The concentration of his active mind directed his
whole being on the track of Clotilde, idealizing her beyond human.
That last day when he had seen her appeared to him as the day of days.
That day was Clotilde herself, she in person; he saw it as the woman,
and saw himself translucent in the great luminousness; and behind it all
was dark, as in front. That one day was the sun of his life. It had
been a day of rain, and he beheld it in memory just as it had been, with