Belle Rose: A Romance of the Cloak and Sword — page 372: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

354 A RAY OF SUNSHINE. Your Majesty recollect that Monsieur de Louvois hates Belle-Rose?’’ ‘*Porhaps you should have forgotten it, monsieur le duc, and only recollect what protects him,’’ replied the king. ‘‘As to you, monsieur,’’ added he, transferring his looks to Belle-Rose, ‘‘you are going to leave at once for Paris; I have charged you with informing Monsieur de Louvois of the first sucesses of our campaign. The dispatches will be sealed and handed you by an officer of our household. Go and return, monsieur; your place is among us.”’ No one in the kingdom could be more seducing and fascinating than Louis XIV. when he wished to be; grace and dignity were allied in him in an equal proportion, and he had naturally that nobility which lends value to the least things. **Sire,’’ exclaimed Belle-Rose, ‘‘you have returned to me that place in the army in which I have fought for Your Majesty; my life is yours.’”’ An hour after this interview Belle-Rose received the dispatches and mounted a post-chaise, after having bade farewell to Monsieur de Luxembourg and Monsieur de Naucrais. Déroute was with him. Cornelius staid behind with Pierre. The rendezvous was before Utrecht. If Dé- route had not been able to quit Belle-Rose, Grippard, on his side, had not been able to separate himself from Déroute. The latter was groom, the former was postilion; when they were together, there was no longer either cor- poral or sergeant; they were like shadow and body. They made great haste to cross the distance which extends from the banks of the Rhine to Paris. Though Belle-Rose re- turned there under conditions as excellent as he could wish for, he was seized by an invincible sadness, and though he made every effort to chase it away, it always returned to extend itself like a vail over his mind. The death of Mon- sieur de Pomereux counted for much in this sadness. That brave gentleman had given him so many proofs of a chivalric devotion, that Belle-Rose had conceived a sincere friendship for him. Nevertheless he did not recall that the death of Monsieur d’Assonville had filled him with such a great depression; he had experienced from it a pro- found and lasting grief, but not that sort of uneasiness which he could not surmount. He reached the point of thinking it a presentiment, and his melancholy increased. The firmest characters are subject to fits of depression which are inexplicable but nevertheless powerful. Belle- Rose, however, was one of those who sacrificed everything 5 (oy fh (E(0) a. nae > com ta 7+ sf nig