f so
painfully affected, that he looked at the marshal without answering.

"Yes!" continued the other; "yes! it may be base and ungrateful--but no
matter!--Twenty times I have felt jealous of the affectionate confidence
which my children display towards you, while with me they seem always to
be in fear. If their melancholy faces ever grow animated for a moment, it
is in talking to you, in seeing you; while for me they have nothing but
cold respect--and that kills me. Sure of the affection of my children, I
would have braved and surmounted every difficulty--" Then, seeing that
Dagobert rushed towards the door which led to the chamber of Rose and
Blanche, the marshal asked: "Where are you going?"

"For your daughters, general."

"What for?"

"To bring them face to face with you--to tell them: 'My children, your
father thinks that you do not love him.'--I will only say that--and then
you will see."

"Dagobert! I forbid you to do it," cried the marshal, hastily.

"I don't care for that--you have no right to be unjust to the poor
children," said the soldier, as he again advanced towards the door.

"Dagobert, I command you to remain here," cried the marshal.

"Listen to me, general. I am your soldier, your inferior, your servant,
if you will," said the old grenadier, roughly; "but neither rank nor
station shall keep me silent, when I have to defend your daughters. All
must be explained--I know but one way--and that is to bring honest people
face to face."

If the marshal had not seized him by the arm, Dagobert would have entered
the apartment of the young girls.

"Remain!" said the marshal, so imperiously that the soldier, accustomed
to obedience, hung his head, and stood still.

"What would you do?" resumed the marshal. "Tell my children, that I think
they do not love me? induce them to affect a tenderness they do not
feel--when it is not their fault, but mine?"

"Oh, general!" said Dagobert, in a tone of despair, "I no longer feel
anger, in hearing you speak thus of your children. It is such grief, that
it breaks my heart!"

Touched by the expression of the soldier's countenance, the marshal
continued, less abruptly: "Come, I may be wrong; and yet I ask you,
without bitterness or jealousy, are not my children more confiding, more
familiar, with you than with me?"

"God bless me, general!" cried Dagobert; "if you come to that, they are
more familiar with Spoil-sport than with either of us. You are their
fat