say what his real name was. Then the boys
told their own names and ages, and those of all the family: but they did
not mention Charles, having learned that much prudence from the distress
they saw in the faces of their sister and mother. Then it appeared that
the soldiers could tell a great deal about the Dauphiness.

"Will she be here to-morrow?" asked Marc.

"That depends upon where she is to-night," replied Jerome. "The last I
heard of her was at Strasburg. You know she is a German, and comes from
Germany."

The boys had never heard of Germany, near as they were to it, and did
not know where Strasburg was. So they asked about something that they
could understand; what the great lady's name was, and how old she
looked.

"Her name is Marie-Antoinette-Joseph-Jeanne de Lorraine: and her age
is--Let us see. Comrade, how old is she, exactly? I heard tell, I
think, that she is fifteen."

"Oh, that can't be!" exclaimed the boys. "Married at fifteen! And our
Marie is--"

Here Robin remembered that he must not allude to Charles, and stopped.

"She was born on the day of the great earthquake at Lisbon--"

"Is that where she lives?"

"No, I think not. Whether Lisbon is in Germany, I am not certain; but I
don't think she and her mother were in the earthquake; but I know that
it happened the day she was born, and that it hurts her spirits to think
of it. She takes it for a sign that she will live unhappy, or die in
some dreadful way."

"You have not served out of France," observed Randolphe, as he came up,
with the third soldier, and seated himself on the bench. "You have not
seen either Lisbon or Germany, I suppose; for I can tell you that Lisbon
is a good way off from any place where this princess has been. Well, I
am sorry to hear anything hurts her spirits; but, to be sure, the great
earthquake was an awful thing."

"I am thinking," said Jerome, "that a good many thousand people must
have been born that same day; I hope they are not all troubled with bad
spirits. It would be a curious sight to see so many people of fifteen
all low about the manner of their lives and deaths."

"She is very low sometimes, however," observed his comrade. "When she
was leaving the city she lived in, she wept so that nothing was ever
seen like it. She covered her eyes sometimes with her handkerchief, and
sometimes with her hands; and looked out many times from the
coach-window, to see her mother's palace once more."