proud and loving father as he was,
showed him to me in his cradle, and said: 'My old friend, you will be to
the son what you have been to the father; who loves us, loves our
France.'"

"Yes, I know it. Many times you have repeated those words to me, and,
like yourself, I have been moved by them."

"Well, father! suppose, informed of the sufferings of the son of the
Emperor, I had seen--with the positive certainty that I was not
deceived--a letter from a person of high rank in the court of Vienna,
offering to a man that was still faithful to the Emperor's memory, the
means of communicating with the king of Rome, and perhaps of saving him
from his tormentors--"

"What next?" said the workman, looking fixedly at his son. "Suppose
Napoleon II. once at liberty--"

"What next?" exclaimed the marshal. Then he added, in a suppressed voice:
"Do you think, father, that France is insensible to the humiliations she
endures? Do you think that the memory of the Emperor is extinct? No, no;
it is, above all, in the days of our country's degredation, that she
whispers that sacred name. How would it be, then, were that name to rise
glorious on the frontier, reviving in his son? Do you not think that the
heart of all France would beat for him?"

"This implies a conspiracy--against the present government--with Napoleon
II. for a watchword," said the workman. "This is very serious."

"I told you, father, that I was very unhappy; judge if it be not so,"
cried the marshal. "Not only I ask myself, if I ought to abandon my
children and you, to run the risk of so daring an enterprise, but I ask
myself if I am not bound to the present government, which, in
acknowledging my rank and title, if it bestowed no favor, at least did me
an act of justice. How shall I decide?--abandon all that I love, or
remain insensible to the tortures of Emperor--of that Emperor to the son
of the whom I owe everything--to whom I have sworn fidelity, both to
himself and child? Shall I lose this only opportunity, perhaps, of saving
him, or shall I conspire in his favor? Tell me, if I exaggerate what I
owe to the memory of the Emperor? Decide for me, father! During a whole
sleepless night, I strove to discover, in the midst of this chaos, the
line prescribed by honor; but I only wandered from indecision to
indecision. You alone, father--you alone, I repeat, can direct me."

After remaining for some moments in deep thought, the old man was about
to answer, when so