's a well-known sign. I would wager my salvation, he
still lives. God would not so deceive us."

"Ah! if he would only come--no matter for his danger here."

"Poor Monsieur Auguste!" cried Brigitte, "he must be toiling along the
roads on foot."

"There's eight o'clock striking now," cried the countess, in terror.

She dared not stay away any longer from her guests; but before
re-entering the salon, she paused a moment under the peristyle of the
staircase, listening if any sound were breaking the silence of the
street. She smiled at Brigitte's husband, who was standing sentinel
at the door, and whose eyes seemed stupefied by the intensity of his
attention to the murmurs of the street and night.

Madame de Dey re-entered her salon, affecting gaiety, and began to play
loto with the young people; but after a while she complained of feeling
ill, and returned to her chimney-corner.

Such was the situation of affairs, and of people's minds in the house
of Madame de Dey, while along the road, between Paris and Cherbourg, a
young man in a brown jacket, called a "carmagnole," worn de rigueur at
that period, was making his way to Carentan. When drafts for the
army were first instituted, there was little or no discipline. The
requirements of the moment did not allow the Republic to equip its
soldiers immediately, and it was not an unusual thing to see the roads
covered with recruits, who were still wearing citizen's dress. These
young men either preceded or lagged behind their respective battalions,
according to their power of enduring the fatigues of a long march.

The young man of whom we are now speaking, was much in advance of a
column of recruits, known to be on its way from Cherbourg, which the
mayor of Carentan was awaiting hourly, in order to give them their
billets for the night. The young man walked with a jades step, but
firmly, and his gait seemed to show that he had long been familiar with
military hardships. Though the moon was shining on the meadows about
Carentan, he had noticed heavy clouds on the horizon, and the fear of
being overtaken by a tempest may have hurried his steps, which were
certainly more brisk than his evident lassitude could have desired.
On his back was an almost empty bag, and he held in his hand a boxwood
stick, cut from the tall broad hedges of that shrub, which is so
frequent in Lower Normandy.

This solitary wayfarer entered Carentan, the steeples of which, touched
by the moonlight,