He took the young girl’s head and kissed her hair; then he left the garden by the postern-gate and fled to Les Touches, where he stayed near Camille till past midnight.  On returning home, at one in the morning, he found his mother awaiting him with her worsted-work.  He entered softly, clasped her hand in his, and said,—­

“Is Charlotte gone?”

“She goes to-morrow, with her aunt, in despair, both of them,” answered the baroness.  “Come to Ireland with me, my Calyste.”

“Many a time I have thought of flying there—­”

“Ah!” cried the baroness.

“With Beatrix,” he added.

Some days after Charlotte’s departure, Calyste joined the Chevalier du Halga in his daily promenade on the mall with his little dog.  They sat down in the sunshine on a bench, where the young man’s eyes could wander from the vanes of Les Touches to the rocks of Croisic, against which the waves were playing and dashing their white foam.  Calyste was thin and pale; his strength was diminishing, and he was conscious at times of little shudders at regular intervals, denoting fever.  His eyes, surrounded by dark circles, had that singular brilliancy which a fixed idea gives to the eyes of hermits and solitary souls, or the ardor of contest to those of the strong fighters of our present civilization.  The chevalier was the only person with whom he could exchange a few ideas.  He had divined in that old man an apostle of his own religion; he recognized in his soul the vestiges of an eternal love.

“Have you loved many women in your life?” he asked him on the second occasion, when, as seamen say, they sailed in company along the mall.

“Only one,” replied Du Halga.

“Was she free?”

“No,” exclaimed the chevalier.  “Ah! how I suffered!  She was the wife of my best friend, my protector, my chief—­but we loved each other so!”

“Did she love you?” said Calyste.

“Passionately,” replied the chevalier, with a fervency not usual with him.

“You were happy?”

“Until her death; she died at the age of forty-nine, during the emigration, at St. Petersburg, the climate of which killed her.  She must be very cold in her coffin.  I have often thought of going there to fetch her, and lay her in our dear Brittany, near to me!  But she lies in my heart.”

The chevalier brushed away his tears.  Calyste took his hand and pressed it.

“I care for this little dog more than for life itself,” said the old man, pointing to Thisbe.  “The little darling is precisely like the one she held on her knees and stroked with her beautiful hands.  I never look at Thisbe but what I see the hands of Madame l’Amirale.”

“Did you see Madame de Rochefide?” asked Calyste.

“No,” replied the chevalier.  “It is sixty-eight years since I have looked at any woman with attention—­except your mother, who has something of Madame l’Amirale’s complexion.”