calamity."

"Raoul, as you know, is deeply religious. He regards the defeat we have
sustained, and the peril that threatens us, as the beginning of a divine
chastisement, justly incurred by our sins--I mean, the sins of Paris. In
vain my father reminds him of Voltaire's story, in which the ship goes
down with a fripon on board. In order to punish the fripon, the honest
folks are drowned."

"Is your father going to remain on board the ship, and share the fate of
the other honest folks?"

"Pas si bete. He is off to Dieppe for sea-bathing. He says that Paris
has grown so dirty since the 4th September, that it is only fit for
the feet of the Unwashed. He wished my mother to accompany him; but she
replies, 'No; there are already too many wounded not to need plenty of
nurses.' She is assisting to inaugurate a society of ladies in aid of
the Soeurs de Charite. Like Raoul, she is devout, but she has not his
superstitions. Still his superstitions are the natural reaction of a
singularly earnest and pure nature from the frivolity and corruption
which, when kneaded well up together with a slice of sarcasm, Paris
calls philosophy."

"And what, my dear Enguerrand, do you propose to do?"

"That depends on whether we are really besieged. If so, of course I
become a soldier."

"I hope not a National Guard?"

"I care not in what name I fight, so that I fight for France."

As Enguerrand said these simple words, his whole countenance, seemed
changed. The crest rose; his eyes sparkled; the fair and delicate
beauty which had made him the darling of women--the joyous sweetness
of expression and dainty grace of high breeding which made him the most
popular companion to men,--were exalted in a masculine nobleness of
aspect, from which a painter might have taken hints for a study of the
young Achilles separated for ever from effeminate companionship at the
sight of the weapons of war. De Mauleon gazed on him admiringly. We have
seen that he shared the sentiments uttered--had resolved on the same
course of action. But it was with the tempered warmth of a man who seeks
to divest his thoughts and his purpose of the ardour of romance,
and who, in serving his country, calculates on the gains to his own
ambition. Nevertheless he admired in Enguerrand the image of his own
impulsive and fiery youth.

"And you, I presume," resumed Enguerrand, "will fight too, but rather
with pen than with sword."

"Pens will now only be dipped in red ink, a