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"Certainly, Mademoiselle," said Gaston, and then to Count Saxe: "Monsieur, may we meet at Uzmaiz, and may we return in triumph to Mitau, to take our own. Good by, Babache the next time I see you I hope your face will be washed, for it is like a blackamoor's now, with burnt powder."
The Russians had no inkling that we were making for Uzmaiz, and not half an hour from the time we started came a deluge of rain, the welcomest imaginable; for in that downpour the Russians lost us and never found us again. We fared on, knowing every foot of the way, for Count Saxe had made himself thoroughly familiar with this road to his island fortress.
But in truth she seemed to me as beautiful then as the rosy dawn. We perched her upon her charger, and put off again. Francezka was in the highest spirits, and was a fountain of laughter, like a child. She had seemed completely the woman up to this time, and now she seemed nothing more than a joyful, unthinking child. Never was any merrier journey than the last few miles, before we reached Uzmaiz.
Madame Riano, with her usual acuteness had pitched upon Königsberg as the likeliest place to await news from Francezka, for she had found out that Count Saxe was at Uzmaiz, and concluded that Francezka was there or in that neighborhood.
I shall never forget the August evening when first we saw that island of enchanted beauty in Lake Uzmaiz. The lake lay blue and still, with an opaline sky, shot with gold, reflected in it. The green island, fringed with trees, and with a small, half-ruined castle on a gentle knoll in the middle, was mirrored in that fair expanse.
I judged that the payment of the ten thousand crowns would about swallow up Gaston Cheverny's modest estate; but apparently he gave no more thought to it than he did to last year's birds' nests. It was in the middle of the glorious summer afternoon that the fair blue lake of Uzmaiz came into view. As soon as we reached the shore of the lake we were perceived, and boats were sent for us.
There is something in having a good horse under one which mightily uplifts a weary heart. It is like meat and drink, a consolation that rises in the blood and makes its way to the seat of the soul, which goes soaring. So it was with us on that September morning when we left Uzmaiz.
We struck out through a green, well-wooded country, avoiding the highroads and ever going deeper into the forests of larch and fir that led toward the west from Uzmaiz. If my heart had not been full of Francezka, I should have enjoyed the conversation of that rascal, Schnelling.
I told her all the risks we ran, and offered to follow any other plan which seemed good to her. But she assured me of her confidence in me, and, in truth, there was but one thing for us to do to make for Uzmaiz. While she was resting I had gone out and bought a handsome riding suit for her; for it was clearly best that she should travel as my young brother François.
At this my master could not help laughing, and expressed himself as being entirely at ease about a single crown of his money going to the fund for driving him out of Courland. On being asked, Schnelling told us his encampment, as he called it, was three days' march from Uzmaiz. Now Count Saxe was a good judge of whether a man was telling the truth or not.
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