eps. If the
successor of the God of Combats is not deaf to the
voice of the blood that courses in his veins, he will
restore me my sword and epaulettes, so that I may lay
them at thy feet. Be faithful to me--wait, hope! May
these lines be to thee a talisman against the dangers
threatening thy independence. Oh, my Clementine,
tenderly guard thyself for thy

"VICTOR FOUGAS!"

Clementine sent him no answer, but, just as he was getting on the train,
he was accosted by a messenger, who handed him a pretty red leather
pocket-book, and ran away with all his might. The pocket-book was
entirely new, solid, and carefully fastened. It contained twelve hundred
francs in bank notes--all the young girl's savings. Fougas had no time
to deliberate on this delicate circumstance. He was pushed into a car,
the locomotive puffed, and the train started.

The Colonel began to review in his memory the various events which had
succeeded each other in his life during less than a week. His arrest
among the frosts of the Vistula, his sentence to death, his imprisonment
in the fortress of Liebenfeld, his reawakening at Fontainebleau, the
invasion of 1814, the return from the island of Elba, the hundred days,
the death of the emperor and the king of Rome, the restoration of the
Bonapartes in 1852, his meeting with a young girl who was the
counterpart of Clementine Pichon in all respects, the flag of the 23d,
the duel with the colonel of cuirassiers--all this, for Fougas, had not
taken up more than four days. The night reaching from the 11th of
November, 1813, to the 17th of August, 1859, seemed to him even a little
shorter than any of the others; for it was the only time that he had had
a full sleep, without any dreaming.

A less active spirit, and a heart less warm, would, perhaps, have lapsed
into a sort of melancholy. For, in fact, one who has been asleep for
forty-six years would naturally become somewhat alien to mankind in
general, even in his own country. Not a relation, not a friend, not a
familiar face, on the whole face of the earth! Add to this a multitude
of new words, ideas, customs, and inventions, which make him feel the
need of a cicerone, and prove to him that he is a stranger. But Fougas,
on reopening his eyes, following the precept of Horace, was thrown into
the very midst of action. He had improvised for him friends, enemies, a
sweetheart, and a rival. Fontainebleau, his second native place,