s forgiven.

April, May, June, went by, and still Dorothea lived in her dream,
troubled only by dread of the day which must bring her lover's task to
an end, and, with it, his almost daily visits. Bit by bit she learned
his story. He told her of Arles, his birthplace, with its Roman masonry
and amphitheatre; of a turreted terraced chateau and a family of
aristocrats lording it among the vineyards; conspiring a little later
with other noble families, entertaining them at secret meetings of the
_Chiffonne_, where oaths were taken; later again, defending itself
behind barricades of paving-stones; last of all, marched or carried in
batches to the guillotine or the fusillade. He told of Avignon and its
Papal Castle overhanging the Rhone, the city where he had spent his
school days, and at the age of nine had seen Patriot L'Escuyer stabbed
to death in the Cordeliers' Church with women's scissors; had seen
Jourdan, the avenger, otherwise Coupe-tete, march flaming by at the
head of his brave _brigands d'Avignon_. He told of the sequel, the
hundred and thirty men, women and babes slaughtered in the dungeon of
the _Glaciere_; of Choisi's Dragoons and Grenadiers at the gates, and
how, with roses scattered before them, they marched through the streets
to the Castle, entered the gateway and paused, brought to a stand by
the stench of putrefying flesh. He and his school mates had taken a
holiday--their master being in hiding--to see the bodies lifted out.
Also he had seen the search party ride out through the gates and return
again, bringing Jourdan, with feet strapped beneath his horse's belly.
He told of his journey to, Paris--his purpose to learn to paint (at
such a time!); of the great David, fat and wheezy, back at his easel,
panting from civil blood-shed; of the call to arms, his enlistment,
his first campaign of 1805; of the foggy morning of Austerlitz, his
wound, and he long hours he lay in the rear of a battery on the height
of Pratzen, writhing, watching the artillerymen at work and so on,
with stories of marching and fighting, nights slept out by him at full
length on the sodden turf beside his arms.

She had no history to tell him in exchange; she asked only to listen
and to comfort. Yet so cleverly he addressed his story that the longest
monologue became, by aid of a look or pressure of the hand, a
conversation in which she, his guardian angel, bore her part. Did he
talk of Avignon, for instance? It was the land of Laur