ther, and am trying to get to
him. I entreat you, furnish me with the means to reach Paris." The light
from a gas jet fell full on the captain's face she stopped in surprise.
"What, Otto, is it you! Oh, _mon Dieu_, be good to me, since chance has
once more brought us together!"

It was Otto Gunther, the cousin, as stiff and ceremonious as ever,
tight-buttoned in his Guard's uniform, the picture of a narrow-minded
martinet. At first he failed to recognize the little, thin,
insignificant-looking woman, with the handsome light hair and the pale,
gentle face; it was only by the brave, honest look that filled her eyes
that he finally remembered her. His only answer was a slight shrug of
the shoulders.

"You know I have a brother in the army," Henriette eagerly went on. "He
is in Paris; I fear he has allowed himself to become mixed up with
this horrible conflict. O Otto, I beseech you, assist me to continue my
journey."

At last he condescended to speak. "But I can do nothing to help you;
really I cannot. There have been no trains running since yesterday; I
believe the rails have been torn up over by the ramparts somewhere.
And I have neither a horse and carriage nor a man to guide you at my
disposal."

She looked him in the face with a low, stifled murmur of pain and sorrow
to behold him thus obdurate. "Oh, you will do nothing to aid me. My God,
to whom then can I turn!"

It was an unlikely story for one of those Prussians to tell, whose hosts
were everywhere all-powerful, who had the city at their beck and call,
could have requisitioned a hundred carriages and brought a thousand
horses from their stables. And he denied her prayer with the haughty air
of a victor who has made it a law to himself not to interfere with the
concerns of the vanquished, lest thereby he might defile himself and
tarnish the luster of his new-won laurels.

"At all events," continued Henriette, "you know what is going on in the
city; you won't refuse to tell me that much."

He gave a smile, so faint as scarce to be perceptible. "Paris is
burning. Look! come this way, you can see more clearly."

Leaving the station, he preceded her along the track for a hundred steps
or so until they came to an iron foot-bridge that spanned the road.
When they had climbed the narrow stairs and reached the floor of the
structure, resting their elbows on the railing, they beheld the broad
level plain outstretched before them, at the foot of the slope of the
e