they had good horses and all that they
needed. And so they went, and the father returned to his home again.
Then the war began. He had letters from Fleurus, and again from Ligny.
All went well. Then came the battle of Waterloo, and you know the rest.
France was plunged into mourning; every family waited in intense anxiety
for news. You may imagine, madame, how the old man waited for tidings,
in anxiety that knew no peace nor rest. He used to read the gazettes;
he went to the coach office every day. One evening he was told that the
colonel's servant had come. The man was riding his master's horse--what
need was there to ask any questions?--the colonel was dead, cut in
two by a shell. Before the evening was out the youngest son's servant
arrived--the youngest had died on the eve of the battle. At midnight
came a gunner with tidings of the death of the last; upon whom, in those
few hours, the poor father had centered all his life. Madame, they all
had fallen."

After a pause the good man controlled his feelings, and added gently:

"And their father is still living, madame. He realized that if God had
left him on earth, he was bound to live on and suffer on earth; but he
took refuge in the sanctuary. What could he be?"

The Marquise looked up and saw the cure's face, grown sublime in its
sorrow and resignation, and waited for him to speak. When the words
came, tears broke from her.

"A priest, madame; consecrated by his own tears previously shed at the
foot of the altar."

Silence prevailed for a little. The Marquise and the cure looked out at
the foggy landscape, as if they could see the figures of those who were
no more.

"Not a priest in a city, but a simple country cure," added he.

"At Saint-Lange," she said, drying her eyes.

"Yes, madame."

Never had the majesty of grief seemed so great to Julie. The two words
sank straight into her heart with the weight of infinite sorrow. The
gentle, sonorous tones troubled her heart. Ah! that full, deep voice,
charged with plangent vibration, was the voice of one who had suffered
indeed.

"And if I do not die, monsieur, what will become of me?" The Marquise
spoke almost reverently.

"Have you not a child, madame?"

"Yes," she said stiffly.

The cure gave her such a glance as a doctor gives a patient whose life
is in danger. Then he determined to do all that in him lay to combat the
evil spirit into whose clutches she had fallen.

"We must live on with our sorrow