eyes and nose all red and swollen
from snivelling she set the bowl on a table and hurried to my side.

"What is it? Is the pain so dreadful?" she whispered.

"No--oh no. I'm only a fool, and quite hungry, madame."

She brought the broth and bread and a glass of the most exquisite wine
I ever tasted--a wine that seemed to brighten the whole room with its
liquid sunshine.

"Do you know where you are?" she asked, gravely.

"Oh yes--in Morsbronn."

"And in whose house, monsieur?"

"I don't know--" I glanced instinctively at the tarnished coronet on
the canopy above the bed. "Do you know, Madame la Comtesse?"

"I ought to," she said, faintly amused. "I was born in this room. It
was to this house that I desired to come before--my exile."

Her eyes softened as they rested first on one familiar object, then on
another.

"The house has always been in our family," she said. "It was once
one of those fortified farms in the times when every hamlet was a
petty kingdom--like the King of Yvetot's domain. Doubtless the ancient
Trecourts also wore cotton night-caps for their coronets."

"I remember now," said I, "a stone turret wedged in between two
houses. Is this it?"

"Yes, it is all that is left of the farm. My ancestors built this
crazy old row of houses for their tenants."

After a silence I said, "I wish I could look out of the window."

She hesitated. "I don't suppose it could harm you?"

"It will harm me if I don't," said I.

She went to the window and folded up the varnished blinds.

"How dreadful the cannonade is growing," she said. "Wait! don't
think of moving! I will push you close to the window, where you can
see."

The tower in which my room was built projected from the rambling row
of houses, so that my narrow window commanded a view of almost the
entire length of the street. This street comprised all there was of
Morsbronn; it lay between a double rank of houses constructed of
plaster and beams, and surmounted by high-pointed gables and slated or
tiled roofs, so fantastic that they resembled steeples.

Down the street I could see the house that I had left twenty-four
hours before, never dreaming what my journey to La Trappe held in
store for me. One or two dismounted soldiers of the Third Hussars sat
in the doorway, listening to the cannon; but, except for these
listless troopers, a few nervous sparrows, and here and there a
skulking peasant, slinking off with a load of household furniture on
h