cannot imagine what else Fate has spared me for--I shall write the
Diary of a Sinner, the whole truth. I shall tell how when my
peasant fighters were kneeling round me praying for success, even
thanking God for me, I was smiling in my glove--in scorn of myself,
not of them, Chevalier, no,--no, not of them! The peasant's is the
true greatness. Everything is with the aristocrat; he has to kick
the great chances from his path; but the peasant must go hunting
them in peril. Hardly snatching sustenance from Fate, the peasant
fights into greatness; the aristocrat may only win to it by
rejecting Fate's luxuries. The peasant never escapes the austere
teaching of hard experience, the aristocrat the languor of good
fortune. There is the peasant and there am I. Voila! enough of
Detricand of Vaufontaine. . . . The Princess Guida and the
child, are they--

So the letter ran, and the Chevalier read it aloud to Guida up to the
point where her name was writ. Afterwards Guida would sit and think of
what Detricand had said, and of the honesty of nature that never allowed
him to deceive himself. It pleased her also to think she had in some
small way helped a man to the rehabilitation of his life. He had said
that she had helped him, and she believed him; he had proved the
soundness of his aims and ambitions; his career was in the world's mouth.

The one letter the Chevalier did not read to Guida referred to Philip.
In it Detricand begged the Chevalier to hold himself in readiness to
proceed at a day's notice to Paris.

So it was that when, after months of waiting, the Chevalier suddenly
left St. Heliers to join Detricand, Guida did not know the object of his
journey. All she knew was that he had leave from the Directory to visit