re
children."

"And yet your country has not suffered the dreadful convulsion of ours;
no social wreck has scattered those who once lived in close affection
together. It is sad when such ties are broken. You came early to
France, I think you told me?"

"Yes, Madame. When a mere child my heart conceived a kind of devotion
to the Emperor: his fame, his great exploits, seemed something more
than human,--filled every thought of my brain; and to be a soldier,_his_
soldier, was the limit of my ambition. I fancied, too, that the cause he
asserted was that of freedom; that liberty, universal liberty, was the
watchword that led to victory."

"And you have discovered your error," interrupted she. "Alas! it were
better to have followed the illusion. A faith once shaken leaves an
unsettled spirit, and with such there is little energy."

"And less of hope," said I, despondingly.

"Not so, if there be youth. Come, you must tell me your story. It is
from no mere curiosity I ask you; but that I have seen much of the
world, and am better able than you to offer counsel and advice. I have
remarked, for some time past, that you appear to have no acquaintance
in Paris,--no friend. Let me be such. If the confidence have no other
result, it will relieve your heart of some portion of its burden;
besides, the others here will learn to regard you with less distrust."

"And is such their feeling towards me?"

"Forgive me; I did not exactly use the word I sought for. But now that
I have ventured so far, I may as well confess that you are an object of
the greatest interest in their eyes; nor can they divest themselves of
the impression that some deep-laid plot had led you hither."

"Had I known this before--"

"You had left us. I guessed as much: I have remarked it in your
character already, that a morbid dread of being suspected is ever
uppermost in your thoughts; and accounted for it by supposing that you
might have been thrown at too early an age into life. But you must
not feel angry with us here. As for me, I have no merit in my right
appreciation of you: Monsieur Rubichon told me how you met,--a mere
accident, at the bureau of the prefet."

"It was so; nor have I been able to divine why he addressed himself to
me, nor what circumstance could have led him to believe my sentiments in
accordance with those of his guests."

"Simple enough the reason. He heard from your own lips you were a
stranger, without any acquaintance in Paris.