"Yes; only fancy--"

"You can tell me all this by and by. Just slip on this dry warm
dressing-gown, and take some of this hot wine. You are wet through."

"I'll not refuse, for I am almost frozen to death. I was telling you
that the person who saved these young girls was a hero; and certainly
his courage was beyond anything one could have imagined. When I left
here with the men of the farm, we descended the little winding path,
and arrived at the foot of the cliff--near the little creek of Goelands,
fortunately somewhat sheltered from the waves by five or six enormous
masses of rock stretching out into the sea. Well, what should we find
there? Why, the two young girls I spoke of, in a swoon, with their feet
still in the water, and their bodies resting against a rock, as though
they had been placed there by some one, after being withdrawn from the
sea."

"Dear children! it is quite touching!" said M. Rodin, raising, as usual,
the tip of his little finger to the corner of his right eye, as though
to dry a tear, which was very seldom visible.

"What struck me was their great resemblance to each other," resumed
the bailiff; "only one in the habit of seeing them could tell the
difference."

"Twin--sisters, no doubt," said Madame Dupont.

"One of the poor things," continued the bailiff, "held between her
clasped hands a little bronze medal, which was suspended from her neck
by a chain of the same material."

Rodin generally maintained a very stooping posture; but at these last
words of the bailiff, he drew himself up suddenly, whilst a faint color
spread itself over his livid cheeks. In any other person, these symptoms
would have appeared of little consequence; but in Rodin, accustomed for
long years to control and dissimulate his emotions, they announced
no ordinary excitement. Approaching the bailiff, he said to him in a
slightly agitated voice, but still with an air of indifference: "It was
doubtless a pious relic. Did you see what was inscribed on this medal?"

"No, sir; I did not think of it."

"And the two young girls were like one another--very much like, you
say?"

"So like, that one would hardly know which was which. Probably they are
orphans, for they are dressed in mourning."

"Oh! dressed in mourning?" said M. Rodin, with another start.

"Alas! orphans so young!" said Madame Dupont, wiping her eyes.

"As they had fainted away, we carried them further on to a place where
the sand was quite dry. Wh