th all my might, so tightly,
indeed, that I put myself to sleep. It was not long before I saw the
colonel. He was lying as I saw him in his triple coffin, but he had long
white hair and a most benign and venerable appearance. He begged us to
put him in consecrated ground, and we carried him, you and I, to the
Fontainebleau cemetery. On reaching my mother's tomb we saw that the
stone was displaced. My mother, in a white robe, was moved so as to make
a place beside her, and she seemed waiting for the colonel. But every
time we attempted to lay him down, the coffin left our hands and rested
suspended in the air, as if it had no weight. I could distinguish the
poor old man's features, for his triple coffin had become as transparent
as the alabaster lamp burning near the ceiling of my chamber. He was
sad, and his broken ear bled freely. All at once he escaped from our
hands, the coffin vanished, and I saw nothing but him, pale as a statue,
and tall as the tallest oaks of the _bas-Breau_. His golden epaulettes
spread out and became wings, and he raised himself to heaven, holding
over us both hands as if in blessing. I woke up all in tears, but I have
not told my dream to my aunt, for she would have scolded me again."

"No one ought to be scolded but me, Clementine dear. It is my fault that
your gentle slumbers are troubled by visions of the other world. But all
this will be stopped soon: to-day I am going to seek a definite
receptacle for the Colonel."

CHAPTER VI.

A YOUNG GIRL'S CAPRICE.

Clementine had a fresh young heart. Before knowing Leon, she had loved
but one person--her mother. No cousins of either sex, nor uncles, nor
aunts, nor grandfathers, nor grandmothers, had dissipated, by dividing
it among themselves, that little treasure of affection which
well-constituted children bring into the world. The grandmother,
Clementine Pichon, was married at Nancy in January, 1814, and died three
months later in the suburbs of Toulon, during her first confinement. The
grandfather, M. Langevin, a sub-commissary of the first class, being
left a widower, with a daughter in the cradle, devoted himself to
bringing up his child. He gave her, in 1835, to M. Sambucco, an
estimable and agreeable man, of Italian extraction, born in France, and
King's counsel in the court of Marseilles. In 1838 M. Sambucco, who was
a man of considerable independence, because he had resources of his own,
in some manner highly honorable to himsel