found in such a forest, so ancient, so shady, and so lordly, and we see no reason why the animal after which the four principal characters of this illustrious romance were galloping on horses of different colors and non passibus aequis, should not have-been one.
The stag ran like the true stag that he was, and the fifty dogs at his heels were no ordinary spur to his natural swiftness. The run was so quick that only a few rare bays were to be heard.
Theodore, being the best mounted and the best horseman, followed hard on the pack with incredible eagerness. If Albert was close behind him. Rosette and the little page Isnabel came after, separated by an interval which was increasing every minute.
The interval was soon so great as to take away all hope of restoring an equilibrium.
“Suppose we stop for a little,” said Rosette, to give our horses breath? The hunt is going in the direction of the pond, and I know a cross-road which will take us there as soon as they.”
Isnabel drew the bridle of his little mountain horse which, shaking the hanging locks of his mane over his eyes bent his head, and began to scrape the sand with his hoofs.
This little horse formed the most perfect contrast with Rosette's: he was as black as night, the other as white as satin; he was quite shaggy and dishevelled, the other had its mane plaited with blue, and its tail curled and crisped. The second looked like a unicorn, and the first like a barbet
The same antithetical difference was to be remarked in the masters as in the steeds. Rosette's hair was as dark as Isnabel's was fair; her eyebrows were very neatly traced and in a very apparent manner; the page's were scarcely more vigorous than his skin and resembled the down on a peach. The color of the one was brilliant and strong like the light of noon; the complexion of the other had the transparencies and blushings of the dawn of day.
“Suppose we try to catch up the hunt now?” said Isnabel to Rosette; “the horses have had time to take breath.”
“Come along!” replied the pretty amazon, and they started off at a gallop down a rather narrow, transverse avenue which led to the pond; the two animals were abreast and took up nearly the whole breadth.
On Isnabel's side a great branch projected like an arm from a twisted and knotted tree, which seemed to be shaking its fist at the riders. The child did not see it.
“Take care!” cried Rosette, “bend down on your saddle! you will be unhorsed!”
The warning had been given too late; the branch struck Isnabel in the middle of the body. The violence of the blow made him lose his stirrups, and, as his horse continued to gallop and the branch was too strong to bend, he found himself lifted out of the saddle and fell heavily backward.
The child lay senseless from the blow. Rosette, greatly frightened, threw herself from her horse, and hastened to the page who showed no signs of life.
His cap had fallen off, and his beautiful fair hair streamed on all sides in disorder on the sand. His little open hands looked like hands of wax, so pale were they Rosette knelt down beside him and tried to restore him. She had neither salts nor flask about her, and her perplexity was great. At last she noticed a tolerably deep rut in which the rain-water had collected and become clear; she dipped her finger into it, to the great terror of a little frog who was the naiad of this sea, and shook a few drops upon the bluish temples of the young page. He did not appear to feel them, and the water-pearls rolled along his white cheeks like a sylphid's tears along the leaf of a lily. Rosette, thinking that his clothes might distress him, unfastened his belt, undid the buttons of his tightly-fitting coat and opened his shirt that his breast might have freer play.
Rosette there saw something which to a man would have been one of the most agreeable surprises in the world, but which seemed to be very far from giving her pleasure- for her eyebrows drew close together, and her upper lip trembled slightly-namely, a very white bosom, scarcely formed as yet, but which gave admirable promise, and was already fulfilling much of it; a round, polished ivory bosom — to speak like the Ronsardizers-delicious to see, and more delicious to kiss!
“A woman!” she said, “a woman! ah! Theodore!”
Isnabel-for we shall continue to give him this name, although it was not his-began to breathe a little, and languidly raised his long eyelashes; he had not been wounded in any way, but only stunned. He soon sat up, and with Rosette's assistance was able to stand up on his feet and remount his horse, which had stopped as soon as he had felt that his rider was gone.
They proceeded at a slow pace as far as the pond, where they did in fact meet again with the rest of the hunt Rosette, in a few words, related to Theodore what had taken place. The latter changed color several times during Rosette's narration, and kept his horse beside Isnabel's for the remainder of the way.
They came back very early to the mansion; the day which had commenced so joyously ended rather sadly.
Rosette was pensive, and D'Albert seemed also to be plunged in deep thought. The reader will soon know what had occasioned this.
VIII
No, my dear Silvio, no, I have not forgotten you; I am not one of those who pass through life without ever throwing a look behind; my past follows me and invades my present, and almost my future; your friendship is one of the sun-lit spots which stand out most clearly on the horizon quite blue as it already is of my later years; often do I turn to contemplate it, from the summit I have reached, with a feeling of unspeakable melancholy.
“Oh! what a glorious time was that, when we were pure as angels! Our feet scarcely touched the ground; we had as it were wings upon our shoulders, our desires swept us away, and in the breeze of springtime there trembled about our brows the golden glory of adolescence.
“Do you remember the little island planted with poplars at that part where the river branches off? To reach it, it was necessary to cross a somewhat long and very narrow plank which used to bend strangely in the middle; a real bridge for goats, and one, indeed, which was scarcely used but by them: it was delicious. Short, thick grass wherein the forget-me-not blinkingly opened its pretty little blue eyes, a path as yellow as nankeen which formed a girdle for the island's green robe and clasped its waist, while an ever moving shade of aspens and poplars were not the least of the delights of this paradise. There were great pieces of linen which the women would come to spread out to bleach in the dew; you would have thought them squares of snow; — and that little girl so brown and sunburnt whose large wild eyes shone with such brilliant splendor beneath the long locks of her hair, and who used to run after the goats threatening them and shaking her osier rod when they made as though they would walk over the linens that were under her care-do you remember her?
“And the sulphur-colored butterflies with unequal and quivering flight, and the king-fisher which we so often tried to catch and which had its nest in that alder thicket? and those paths down to the river, with their rudely hewn steps and their posts and stakes all green below, which were nearly always shut in by screens of plants and boughs? How limpid and mirror-like was the water! how clearly could we see the bed of golden gravel! and what a pleasure it was, seated on the bank, to let the tips of our feet dangle in it! The golden-flowered water-lilies spreading gracefully upon it looked like green hair flowing over the agate back of some bathing nymph. The sky looked at itself in this mirror with azure smiles and most exquisite transparencies of pearl-gray, and at all hours of the day there were turquoises, spangles, wools and moires in exhaustless variety. How I loved those squadrons of little ducks with the emerald necks which used to sail incessantly from one bank to the other making wrinkles across the pure glass!
“How well were we suited to be the figures in that landscape! how well adapted were we to that sweet calm nature, and how readily did we harmonize with it! Spring without, youth within, sun on the grass, smiles on our lips, flakes of blossoms on all the bushes, fair illusions fullblown in our souls, modest blushes on our cheeks and on the eglantine, poetry singing in our heart, unseen birds warbling in the trees, light, cooings, perfumes, a thousand confused murmurs, the heart beating, the water stirring a pebble, a grass-blade or a thought upspringing, a drop of water flowing along a flower-cup, a tear overflowing along an eyelash, a sigh of love, a rustling of leaves… what evenings we spent there walking slowly, and so close to the edge that we had often one foot in the water and the other on the ground!
“Alas! this lasted but a short time, with me, at least, for you have been able, while acquiring the knowledge
