before Dagobert rushed to the window and opened it, tearing down the mantle, which had been suspended from the fastening.
It was still dark night, and the wind was blowing hard. The soldier listened, but could hear nothing.
Returning to fetch the lamp from the table, he shaded the flame with his hand, and strove to throw the light outside. Still he saw nothing. Persuaded that a gust of wind had disturbed and shaken the pelisse: and that Rose had been deceived by her own fears he again shut the window.
"Be satisfied, children! The wind is very high; it is that which lifted the corner of the pelisse."
"Yet methought I saw plainly the fingers which had hold of it," said
Rose, still trembling.
"I was looking at Dagobert," said Blanche, "and I saw nothing."
"There was nothing to see, my children; the thing is clear enough. The window is at least eight feet above the ground; none but a giant could reach it without a ladder. Now, had any one used a ladder, there would not have been time to remove it; for, as soon as Rose cried out, I ran to the window, and, when I held out the light, I could see nothing."
"I must have been deceived," said Rose.
"You may be sure, sister, it was only the wind," added Blanche.
"Then I beg pardon for having disturbed you, my good Dagobert."
"Never mind!" replied the soldier musingly, "I am only sorry that Spoil sport is not come back. He would have watched the window, and that would have quite tranquillized you. But he no doubt scented the stable of his comrade, Jovial, and will have called in to bid him good-night on the road. I have half a mind to go and fetch him."
"Oh, no, Dagobert! do not leave us alone," cried the maidens; "we are too much afraid."
"Well, the dog is not likely to remain away much longer, and I am sure we shall soon hear him scratching at the door, so we will continue our story," said Dagobert, as he again seated himself near the head of the bed, but this time with his face towards the window.
"Now the general was prisoner at Warsaw," continued he, "and in love with your mother, whom they wished to marry to another. In 1814, we learned the finish of the war, the banishment of the Emperor to the Isle of Elba, and the return of the Bourbons. In concert with the Prussians and Russians, who had brought them back, they had exiled the Emperor. Learning all this, your mother said to the general: 'The war is finished; you are free, but your Emperor is in trouble. You owe everything to him; go and join him in his misfortunes. I know not when we shall meet again, but I shall never marry any one but you, I am yours till death!'—Before he set out the general called me to him, and said: 'Dagobert, remain here; Mademoiselle Eva may have need of you to fly from her family, if they should press too hard upon her; our correspondence will have to pass through your hands; at Paris, I shall see your wife and son; I will comfort them, and tell them you are my friend.'"
"Always the same," said Rose, with emotion, as she looked affectionately at Dagobert.
"As faithful to the father and mother as to their children," added
Blanche.
"To love one was to love them all," replied the soldier. "Well, the general joined the Emperor at Elba; I remained at Warsaw, concealed in the neighborhood of your mother's house; I received the letters, and conveyed them to her clandestinely. In one of those letters—I feel proud to tell you of it my children—the general informed me that the Emperor himself had remembered me."
"What, did he know you?"
"A little, I flatter myself—'Oh! Dagobert!' said he to your father, who was talking to him about me; 'a horse-grenadier of my old guard—a soldier of Egypt and Italy, battered with wounds—an old dare-devil, whom I decorated with my own hand at Wagram—I have not forgotten him!'—I vow, children, when your mother read that to me, I cried like a fool."
"The Emperor—what a fine golden face he has on the silver cross with the red ribbon that you would sometimes show us when we behaved well."
"That cross—given by him—is my relic. It is there in my knapsack, with whatever we have of value—our little purse and papers. But, to return to your mother; it was a great consolation to her, when I took her letters from the general, or talked with her about him—for she suffered much—oh, so much! In vain her parents tormented and persecuted her; she always answered: 'I will never marry any one but General Simon.' A spirited woman, I can tell you—resigned, but wonderfully courageous. One day she received a letter from the general; he had left the Isle of Elba with the Emperor; the war had again broken out, a short campaign, but as fierce as ever, and heightened by soldiers' devotion. In that campaign of France; my children, especially at Montmirail, your father fought like a lion, and his division followed his example it was no longer valor—it was frenzy. He told me that, in Champagne, the peasants killed so many of those Prussians, that their fields were manured with them for years. Men, women, children, all rushed upon them. Pitchforks, stones, mattocks, all served for the slaughter. It was a true wolf hunt!"
The veins swelled on the soldier's forehead, and his cheeks flushed as he spoke, for this popular heroism recalled to his memory the sublime enthusiasm of the wars of the republic—those armed risings of a whole people, from which dated the first steps of his military career, as the triumphs of the Empire were the last days of his service.
The orphans, too, daughters of a soldier and a brave woman, did not shrink from the rough energy of these words, but felt their cheeks glow, and their hearts beat tumultuously.
"How happy we are to be the children of so brave a father!" cried
Blanche.
"It is a happiness and an honor too, my children—for the evening of the battle of Montmirail, the Emperor, to the joy of the whole army, made your father Duke of Ligny and Marshal of France."
"Marshal of France!" said Rose in astonishment, without understanding the exact meaning of the words.
"Duke of Ligny!" added Blanche with equal surprise.
"Yes; Peter Simon, the son of a workman, became duke and marshal—there is nothing higher except a king!" resumed Dagobert, proudly. "That's how the Emperor treated the sons of the people, and, therefore, the people were devoted to him. It was all very fine to tell them 'Your Emperor makes you food for cannon.' 'Stuff!' replied the people, who are no fools, 'another would make us food for misery. We prefer the cannon, with the chance of becoming captain or colonel, marshal, king—or invalid; that's better than to perish with hunger, cold, and age, on straw in a garret, after toiling forty years for others.'"
"Even in France—even in Paris, that beautiful city—do you mean to say there are poor people who die of hunger and misery, Dagobert?"
"Even in Paris? Yes, my children; therefore, I come back to the point, the cannon is better. With it, one has the chance of becoming, like your father, duke and marshal: when I say duke and marshal, I am partly right and partly wrong, for the title and the rank were not recognized in the end; because, after Montmirail, came a day of gloom, a day of great mourning, when, as the general has told me, old soldiers like myself wept—yes, wept!—on the evening of a battle. That day, my children, was Waterloo!"
There was in these simple words of Dagobert an expression of such deep sorrow, that it thrilled the hearts of the orphans.
"Alas!" resumed the soldier, with a sigh, "there
