Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1930-01-20

~ RUGES, which DieSenhofen re-
earded as their destination, was
to prove no more than the first
IL. stage of journey that was to
continue for close upon three
weeks.
The Duke. who had come thither a
fortnight earlier and who had held
there his first chapter of the Golden
Fleece, had departed suddenly that very
day to return to Brussels.
When in pursuit of him they reached
Brussels on the evening of the morrow.
It was only to discover that he had
done no more than spend some few
hours in the city, and that he was gone
to Namur.
The place was full of rumors. 1t
was being said that the King OF France
was arming for the recapture Of the
cities of the Somme, and that the Duke
was taking order to resist this violation
Of the treaty of Contains.
Followed for Count Anthony days Of
tedious riding, now south, now east,
now west, in the cratic wake OF the
swiftly moving duke. If the count was
wearied by this and fretted by the
necessity for submission to the auton1a-
ton who held him captive, If inwardly
he rebelled against the unlawful COM
pulsicn of which he was the victim, he
realized the futility of remonstrance.
Each night Diesenhofen locked him
into an inn bed room with guard out
side his door and another beneath his
window; and each night of the first
week Count Anthony wrote letter to
Johanna, which next morning he des-
troyed. Such was the bewildered state
of his mind where she was concerned,
such the persisting and inconclusive
conflict between his love on the one
hand and what on the other he ac-
Danvelt, and, consequently, to her, that
Il was impossible for him to give 1t an
expression at once clear and just.
In the end he wrote no more letters,
but spent his nights making sonnets
instead. in the Petrarchian manner,
sad laments compounded of passion
and despair, In the art of which he
found some ease from the realities that
tormented him.
Finally he abandoned even this
vehicle for the relief of his surcharged
heart, and before the end of that
tedious journey, in which they crossed
and recrossed their tracks, he had
reasoned himself into a condition of
sorrowful resignation. He came to
regard the Intervention of the Governor
Of Zealand in his affairs as wise
dispensation of providence, to rescue
him and 70 rescue Johanna from
situation Of hopelessness. They be-
longed, he and she, to different orders,
between which any honorable alliance
was impossible, while his love for her
was too fine to admit even the con-
temptation of an alliance of any other
nature. He had lived. he now told
himself, In a dream. Now he was awake
~, 1,sIo hoiv
dragged by the heels back to the world
and the life to which he really be-
longed, of which he was q part and In
which he had his allotted duties to per-
form-the life from whose hollowness
and apparent unreality he had sought
so vainly and futilely to escape. AS
II man ever could escape his destiny
and the obligations which his place in
life imposed upon him at every step
from the moment Of his birth! To
what, he wondered, was he returning?
Would they put 1t upon him that his
honor demanded the fulfillment of his
hetrothal to the Lady Catharine of
Bourbon? All, not that! He would not
30 defile the real love which had come
to blossom IN his heart. even though
fate denied fruition to it.
It was an uplifting resolve, and 1t
took some of the burden of sorrow from
MS soul. the sense OF Sacrlnce, the
thought Of vowing himself to an ideal,
abstract love, exalted him. It was in
the true romantic spirit.
! His sorrow and his fond yearnings
partly allayed by this resolve. he came
OF last upon the Duke at Saint Quentin.
That was on an afternoon in June, two
weeks after leaving Flushing and hav-
ing followed a ztgzag course between
the pleasant wooded uplands of the
east and the dreary fats Of the west.
which but for the dykes that shut out
the sea would have been a morass.
Up through the town to the grim
citadel rode Diesenhofen. Arrived there,
he left Count Anthony in the guard
room Of the barbican in the care of his
men. while himself he went forward
to seek audience of the duke, An hour
he waited In the spacious ante chamber
that was variously peopled by courtiers
in silk and captains in steel, with here
and there the scarlet flame of a
prelate's robes, and where the only Ian
guage heard was French. Booted and
dusty as he had ridden in, the Lot-
rainer attracted some attention. 1t was