ied away, and our friend stood
in the middle of the square, like a post, with his eyes fixed on the
ground.

"_Tonnerre de Dieu!_" he growled at length, as a clumsy peasant ran
against him and roused him from his reverie. "It is curious how our
feelings toward people change. Only yesterday these two were in my
way, and I would have given a good deal to have been released from my
woman-service. And now I feel wretchedly bored without the little
highness, and as if I were of no use to anybody. If I were not an old
fellow and past all child's-play, and had not such a good wife, I
almost believe--_Tonnerre de Dieu!_"

And slowly, humming a French soldiers' song between his teeth, he
wended his way home, which to-day, for the first time, appeared to him
as sad and solitary as it really was.

CHAPTER XI.

In the mean while Jansen and his two companions had gone on their way,
too much occupied with their own thoughts to think about the company in
which Schnetz had driven by. They were not, indeed, taking an ordinary
morning walk, for it had no less an object in view than to make a child
acquainted with its new mother for the first time--yes, even more than
this. The evening before Julie had expressed her ardent wish to take
the child under her own care at once; the plan to take an apartment
with Angelica had been given up again, for this good soul could not
bring herself to leave the people with whom she was staying, who lived
in great part from what she paid them. So Julie had plenty of room;
and, though she said nothing about it, no doubt the consideration that
the presence of the child would do much to lighten the trial year, both
for herself and her lover, had a great deal to do in determining her.
Since everything that made the bond between them stronger could not but
be very welcome to Jansen, it was decided to put the plan into
execution on the very next day.

But though Jansen had welcomed and urged the idea most eagerly, he
became more and more doubtful, as the hour for putting it into
execution drew near, whether he should succeed without some trouble in
removing the child from the associations to which it was accustomed,
and placing it amid entirely new relations. Julie felt no less nervous;
what had seemed to her the evening before to be easy and self-evident,
appeared to her now in broad daylight as an audacious undertaking that
made her heart beat more anxiously the nea