Emperor arrived and his information would be ready in the very nick of time. With that thought, after staring hard at the château in some little wonderment, he turned aside from the road that led to its entrance and made for the village. 

 His mother had died the year before; his father and his sister, with one or two attendants, lived alone. There was no noble blood in Marteau's veins, as noble blood is counted, but his family had been followers and dependents of the Aumeniers for as many generations as that family had been domiciled in France. Young Jean Marteau had not only been Laure d'Aumenier's playmate, but he had been her devoted slave as well. To what extent that devotion had possessed him he had not known until returning from the military school he had found her gone. 

 The intercourse between the young people had been of the frankest and pleasantest character, but, in spite of the sturdy respectability of the family and the new principles of equality born of the revolution, young Marteau realized—and if he had failed to do so his father had enlightened him—that there was no more chance of his becoming a suitor, a welcome suitor, that is, for the hand of Laure d'Aumenier than there was of his becoming a Marshal of France. 

 Indeed, as in the case of many another soldier, that last was not an impossibility. Men infinitely more humble than he in origin and with less natural ability and greatly inferior education had attained that high degree. If Napoleon lived long enough and the wars continued and he had the opportunity, he, too, might achieve that coveted distinction. But not even that would make him acceptable to Count Robert, no matter what his career had been; and even if Count Robert could have been persuaded the old Marquis Henri would be doubly impossible. 

 So, on the whole, Jean Marteau had been glad that Laure d'Aumenier had gone out of his life. He resolved to put her out of his heart in the same way, and he plunged with splendid energy into the German campaign of 1813, with its singular alternations of success and failure, of victory and defeat, of glory and shame. He had been lucky enough to win his captain's commission, and now, as a major, with a position on the staff of the Emperor, he could look forward to rapid advancement so long as the Emperor lasted. With the bright optimism of youth, even though affairs were now so utterly hopeless that the wise old marshals despaired, Marteau felt that his foot was on the first rung of the ladder of fame and prosperity, and, in spite of himself, as he had approached his native village, he 

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