s
nation?"

"That's a brilliant lamp before us. But see there," cried the abbe, as
he flung open the shutter, and pointed to the bright moon that shone
pale and beautiful in the clear sky--"see there! Is there not something
grander far in the glorious radiance of the orb that has thrown its
lustre on the world for ages? Is it not a glorious thought to revel in
the times long past, and think of those, our fathers, who lived beneath
the same bright beams, and drank in the same golden waters? Men are too
prone to measure themselves with one of yesterday; they find it hard
to wonder at the statue of him whom they have themselves placed on the
pedestal. Feudalism, too, seems a very part of our nature."

"These are thoughts I've never known, nor would I now wish to learn
them," said I; "and as for me, a hero needs no ancestry to make him
glorious in my eyes."

"All true," said the abbe, sipping his glass, and smiling kindly on
me. "A young heart should feel as yours does; and time was when such
feelings had made the fortune of their owner. But even now the world is
changed about us. The gendarmes have the mission that once belonged to
the steel-clad cuirassiers; and, in return, the hussar is little better
than a mouchard."

The blood mounted to my face and temples, and throbbed in every vein and
artery of my forehead, as I heard this contemptuous epithet applied to
the corps I belonged to,--a sarcasm that told not less poignantly on
me, that I felt how applicable it was to my present position. He saw how
deeply mortified the word had made me; and, putting his hand in mine,
with a voice of winning softness he added:--

"One who would be a friend must risk a little now and then; as he who
passes over a plank before his neighbor will sometimes spring to try its
soundness, even at the hazard of a fall. Don't mistake me, Lieutenant;
you have a higher mission than this. France is on the eve of a mighty
change; let us hope it may be a happy one. And now it 's getting
late,--far later, indeed, than is my wont to be abroad,--and so I 'll
wish you good-night. I 'll find a bed in the village; and since I have
made you out here, we must meet often."

There was something--I could not define what exactly--that alarmed me in
the conversation of the abbe; and lonely and solitary as I was, it was
with a sense of relief I saw him take his departure.

The pupil of a school where the Consul's name was never mentioned
without enthusiasm