If you care
for me, I need to hear it from yourself."

"If this quarrel comes to bloodshed, what will become of my brothers?
If you love me, tell me that."

"Still these brothers!" cried Vincent, impatiently.

"And who should be inquired of concerning them, if not you? You took
them to France; you left them there--"

"I was sent here by Bonaparte--put on the deputation by his express
command. If not, I should not now have been here--I should have
remembered you only as a child, and--"

"But Placide and Isaac! Suppose Leclerc and Rochambeau both killed--
suppose Madame Leclerc entering once more into her brother's presence, a
mourning widow--what would Bonaparte do with Placide and Isaac? I am
sure you have no comfort to give me, or you would not so evade what I
ask."

"I declare, I protest you are mistaken. Bonaparte is everything that is
noble, and gracious, and gentle."

"You are sure of that?"

"Nay, why not? Have I not always said so? and you have delighted to
hear me say so."

"I should delight to believe it now. I will believe it; but yet, if he
were really noble, how should this quarrel have arisen? For, if ever
man was noble, and gracious, and gentle, my father is. If two such men
come to open defiance, whose is the crime, and wherein does it lie?"

"If the world fall to pieces, Aimee, there can be no doubt of
Bonaparte's greatness. What majesty he carries with him, through all
his conquests! How whole nations quail under his magnificent
proclamations!"

"Are they really fine? I have seen but few; and they--"

"Are they not all grand? That proclamation in Egypt, for instance, in
which he said he was the Man of Fate who had been foretold in the Koran,
and that all resistance was impious and vain! If it had not happened
four years before Bonaparte went to Egypt, I should have thought your
father--"

"I was just thinking of that. But there is a great difference. It was
not my father, but Laveaux, who said that the black chief, predicted by
Raynal, had appeared. And it was originally said, not as a divine
prophecy, but because, in the natural course of things, the redeemer of
an oppressed race must arise. Besides, my father says nothing but what
he believes; and I suppose Bonaparte did not believe what he was
saying."

"Do you think not? For my part, I believe his very words--that to
oppose him is impious and vain."

"Heaven pity us, if that be true! Was it not in that procla