enissiere, or the house of Guenic would probably have
ended in that hecatomb.

When, on a stormy night after parting from MADAME, the father, son, and
servant returned to the house in Guerande, they took their friends and
the baroness and old Mademoiselle du Guenic by surprise, although the
latter, by the exercise of senses with which the blind are gifted,
recognized the steps of the three men in the little lane leading to the
house. The baron looked round upon the circle of his anxious friends,
who were seated beside the little table lighted by the antique lamp, and
said in a tremulous voice, while Gasselin replaced the three guns and
the sabres in their places, these words of feudal simplicity:--

"The barons did not all do their duty."

Then, having kissed his wife and sister, he sat down in his old
arm-chair and ordered supper to be brought for his son, for Gasselin,
and for himself. Gasselin had thrown himself before Calyste on one
occasion, to protect him, and received the cut of a sabre on his
shoulder; but so simple a matter did it seem that even the women
scarcely thanked him. The baron and his guests uttered neither curses
nor complaints of their conquerors. Such silence is a trait of Breton
character. In forty years no one ever heard a word of contumely from the
baron's lips about his adversaries. It was for them to do their duty
as he did his. This utter silence is the surest indication of an
unalterable will.

This last effort, the flash of an energy now waning, had caused the
present weakness and somnolence of the old man. The fresh defeat and
exile of the Bourbons, as miraculously driven out as miraculously
re-established, were to him a source of bitter sadness.

About six o'clock on the evening of the day on which this history
begins, the baron, who, according to ancient custom, had finished dining
by four o'clock, fell asleep as usual while his wife was reading to him
the "Quotidienne." His head rested against the back of the arm-chair
which stood beside the fireplace on the garden side.

Near this gnarled trunk of an ancient tree, and in front of the
fireplace, the baroness, seated on one of the antique chairs, presented
the type of those adorable women who exist in England, Scotland, or
Ireland only. There alone are born those milk-white creatures with
golden hair the curls of which are wound by the hands of angels, for the
light of heaven seems to ripple in their silken spirals swaying to the