e a sanctified look; the child
playfully clapped her hands, and Edmond was lost in silent reflection.

Just as quickly as it was withdrawn, the curtain fell again over the
horizon and extinguished its light, upon which the Counsellor said,
"was not this like an emblem of our country and of our misfortunes? as
necessity unites us all and brings us together, and as the misery that
oppresses us, if I may so express myself, becomes as it were sanctified
and endeared to us? all our countrymen pass through this baptism of
blood, may heaven have pity on us." Edmond cast an expressive look on
his father and then glanced furtively at the huntsman and the young
stranger, as if to intimate, that such thoughts should not have been
expressed in their presence; the old man smiled kindly on his son, but
did not even try to conceal his feelings.--

"Papa," cried Eveline, "it was as if the sky wished to play at hide and
seek with us, just as little Dorothea with her plump, rosy cheeks
smiles upon me and then, whisk! creeps under the cloth again."

"It was like a bleeding world crying for succour," exclaimed the
fair-haired young man. Edmond cast a sidelong glance at him, and said,
"It is perhaps the extinction of the nefarious revolt!"

"May be so," replied the youth, and raised his blue, child-like eyes to
Edmond, "but I think that everything rests in the hands of the Supreme
Being."

"Most assuredly," said Edmond sharply, "and the evil would have ceased
long since if so much disaffection, secret abettance, and malicious joy
at the misfortunes of the king had not reigned among the common
people."

"Every reasonable person must own however," said the young man with a
melancholy smile, "that the evil did not originate with the people;
they were quiet, and although others may suffer, their miseries are
beyond expression."

The priest left off eating with astonishment, that the little unseemly
man should have the last word with the master of the house opposite to
him; he rolled his eyes up and down as if seeking for some astounding
words of reproof; the little girl pressed the hands of her new friend
for engaging in dispute with Edmond, and the latter as his father
already began to testify his uneasiness at his son's violence, turned
away with an expression of profound contempt, saying, "I know not with
whom I speak, but I think I have some knowledge of you; are you not the
son of the late Huguenot sexton of Besere close by?"

"N