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Oh, Babache, if Francezka Capello should exchange her dower for the smallpox, it would make no difference to me " and he quoted to me that sonnet of Master William Shakespeare's, in which the poet makes it clear that true love is not Time's fool. We started next morning, in beautiful summer weather, which lasted us until we reached Radewitz.
As soon as Francezka saw us, she dropped her book, and ran toward us merrily, like a child, a thin white scarf floating cloudlike behind her. I think she felt that Gaston perhaps had some cause for complaint of her behavior at Radewitz, for never was woman kinder to a man than she to him at that meeting.
She had all the verve, the freshness, of one to whom the world is still new, and youth looked out of her shining eyes. It was as if the other Francezka were laid away with her black Spanish costumes, and this Francezka were the Francezka who had stormed all hearts on the lake of Uzmaiz and at the fêtes of Radewitz.
This tent was of purple and white silk, and was very luxurious; but luxury did not prevent Count Saxe from being a soldier as hardy as those old Greeks, who furiously chased and fought their enemies over the windy plains of Troy. I had seen the crown prince many times at Radewitz.
As I rather suspected your evil purpose, I treated you in the harshest and sharpest way in the Saxon Camp, at Radewitz, in those gala days, 'in hopes you would consider yourself, and take another line of conduct; would confess your faults to me, and beg forgiveness. But all in vain; you grew ever more stiffnecked. "'How have not I, on all occasions, meant honorably by you!
The very night of our arrival there, Gaston Cheverny turned up; and with him was his brother, Regnard. Regnard, as usual, was handsome, smooth, well dressed and well equipped with horses and servants to make a good appearance at Radewitz.
But I was not of that mind. For a long time after Mademoiselle Lecouvreur's death, Count Saxe never spoke her name. He longed to be away from Paris. In June, the King of Saxony, his father, was to form a great camp at Radewitz, and Count Saxe, to his satisfaction, was invited to attend.
Count Saxe and I rallied him often, but he grew so savage about it that presently we desisted. Regnard was far more debonair and reasonable, but I have always distrusted that man who is entirely reasonable in his loves and his hates. At last the June days came to an end, and with it, the gorgeous pageantry of the camp of Radewitz. In a night the splendid scene vanished.
He always bore on his countenance some indications of greatness: the clear, steel blue eye of him, the forehead of a man born a captain. But at Radewitz his old brute of a father had treated him worse than a dog. Like his friend, Voltaire, he had been caned more than once.
One result of the camp at Radewitz, like that at Compiègne some years before, was to make young officers believe that the great game of war was a summer fête. Every captain must travel in his chaise, and there were almost as many cooks and valets and gill-flirts as soldiers on the road to Strasburg.
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