lanche had become quite young
women. To the infantine grace of their charming faces, formerly so plump
and rosy, but now pale and thin, had succeeded an expression of grave
and touching sadness. Their large, mild eyes of limpid azure, which
always had a dreamy character, were now never bathed in those joyous
tears, with which a burst of frank and hearty laughter used of old to
adorn their silky lashes, when the comic coolness of Dagobert, or some
funny trick of Spoil-sport, cheered them in the course of their long and
weary pilgrimage.

In a word, those delightful faces, which the flowery pencil of Greuze
could alone have painted in all their velvet freshness, were now worthy
of inspiring the melancholy ideal of the immortal Ary Scheffer, who gave
us Mignon aspiring to Paradise, and Margaret dreaming of Faust. Rose,
leaning back on the couch, held her head somewhat bowed upon her
bosom, over which was crossed a handkerchief of black crape. The light
streaming from a window opposite, shone softly on her pure, white
forehead, crowned by two thick bands of chestnut hair. Her look was
fixed, and the open arch of her eyebrows, now somewhat contracted,
announced a mind occupied with painful thoughts. Her thin, white little
hands had fallen upon her knees, but still held the embroidery, on which
she had been engaged. The profile of Blanche was visible, leaning a
little towards her sister, with an expression of tender and anxious
solicitude, whilst her needle remained in the canvas, as if she had just
ceased to work.

"Sister," said Blanche, in a low voice, after some moments of silence,
during which the tears seemed to mount to her eyes, "tell me what you
are thinking of. You look so sad."

"I think of the Golden City of our dreams," replied Rose, almost in a
whisper, after another short silence.

Blanche understood the bitterness of these words. Without speaking, she
threw herself on her sister's neck, and wept. Poor girls! the Golden
City of their dreams was Paris, with their father in it--Paris, the
marvellous city of joys and festivals, through all of which the orphans
had beheld the radiant and smiling countenance of their sire! But, alas!
the Beautiful City had been changed into a place of tears, and death,
and mourning. The same terrible pestilence which had struck down their
mother in the heart of Siberia, seemed to have followed them like a dark
and fatal cloud, which, always hovering above them, hid the mild blue