I am certain
are good as fair--pity my impatience--will make haste to prepare them to
receive me--"

More and more agitated, Dagobert avoided the marshal's gaze, and
trembled like a leaf. Adrienne cast down her eyes without answering.
Her heart sunk within her, at thought of dealing the terrible blow to
Marshal Simon.

The latter, astonished at this silence, looking at Adrienne, then at
the soldier, became first uneasy, and at last alarmed. "Dagobert!" he
exclaimed, "something is concealed from me!"

"General!" stammered the soldier, "I assure you--I--I--."

"Madame!" cried Pierre Simon, "I conjure you, in pity, speak to me
frankly!--my anxiety is horrible. My first fears return upon me. What
is it? Are my wife and daughters ill? Are they in danger? Oh! speak!
speak!"

"Your daughters, marshal," said Adrienne "have been rather unwell, since
their long journey--but they are in no danger."

"Oh, heaven! it is my wife!"

"Have courage, sir!" said Mdlle. de Cardoville, sadly. "Alas! you must
seek consolation in the affection of the two angels that remain to you."

"General!" said Dagobert, in a firm grave tone, "I returned from
Siberia--alone with your two daughters."

"And their mother! their mother!" cried Simon, in a voice of despair.

"I set out with the two orphans the day after her death," said the
soldier.

"Dead?" exclaimed Pierre Simon, overwhelmed by the stroke; "dead?" A
mournful silence was the only answer. The marshal staggered beneath this
unexpected shock, leaned on the back of a chair for support, and then,
sinking into the seat, concealed his face with his hands. For same
minutes nothing was heard but stifled sobs, for not only had Pierre
Simon idolized his wife, but by one of those singular compromises, that
a man long cruelly tried sometimes makes with destiny, Pierre Simon,
with the fatalism of loving souls, thought he had a right to reckon upon
happiness after so many years of suffering, and had not for a moment
doubted that he should find his wife and child--a double consolation
reserved to him after going through so much. Very different from certain
people, whom the habit of misfortune renders less exacting, Simon had
reckoned upon happiness as complete as had been his misery. His wife and
child were the sole, indispensable conditions of this felicity, and, had
the mother survived her daughters, she would have no more replaced them
in his eyes than they did her. Weakness or avarice of th