Filled with the unrivalled beauty of the scene, Calvert at length turned away and, passing down the great flight of marble steps leading to the Orangery, slowly made his way into the park.  The shadows were so dense here that the statues looked ghostly in the dim light.  Now and then he could hear a low laugh and catch the flutter of a silken gown along the shadowy walks, or the glint of a stray moonbeam on a silver sword.  He strolled about, scarcely knowing whither, guided by the sound of splashing water, and coming upon many a beautiful spot in his solitary ramble, among them that famous Bosquet de la Reine where the scoundrelly, frightened Rohan had sworn the Queen had stooped to him.  He passed by the place, all unconscious of its unhappy history, and so on down a broad pathway toward the tapis vert.

As he walked slowly along, charmed with the beauty of the scene around him, and smiling now and again to think that fortune should have placed him in the midst of such unaccustomed splendors, he suddenly heard the sounds of a lute near him, fingered in tentative accord, and an instant later he recognized St. Aulaire’s voice.

“’Twas written for you, Madame, and ’tis called ‘Le Pays du Tendre,’” he said, still fingering the strings.  “I would wander in the land with you, Madame.”  Suddenly he begins to sing softly, and, in the silence and perfume of the summer night, his hushed voice sounded like a caress: 

  Land of the madrigal and ode,
  Of rainbow air and cloudless weather,
  Tell me what ferny, elfin road
  Will lead my eager footsteps thither.

  Tricked out with gems shall I go hither? 
  Or in a carriage a la mode,
  Land of the madrigal and ode,
  Of rainbow air and cloudless weather?

  Or in the garb by Love bestow’d? 
  With roses crown’d and sprigs of heather,
  With mandolin and dart enbow’d
  Shall Cupid and I go together—­
  Land of the madrigal and ode,
  Of rainbow air and cloudless weather?

As the last tinkling notes of the lute died away, Calvert was about to go, but he was suddenly startled by hearing a faint scream.  Turning quickly and noiselessly in the direction from which the sound seemed to have come, he found himself in an instant in a thick and beautiful bosquet.  A double row of ilex-trees, inside of which ran a colonnade of white marble, completely encircled and shut in a cleared space, in the centre of which bubbled a fountain.  Into this secluded spot the moon, high in the heavens, shone with unclouded radiance, so that he saw, as clearly as though ’twere noonday, Madame de St. Andre standing at the edge of the basin, her lips white and parted in fear, one hand pressed against her throat, the other held roughly in the grasp of Monsieur de St. Aulaire, who knelt before her, his lute fallen at his side.  The rose which she had worn in her hair had escaped from its diamond loop and lay upon the ground; the delicate gaze d’or of her dress was torn and crushed.