amed of, not
seen. The star of Napoleon had risen above the horizon; the romance of
his early career had commenced; and the campaign of Egypt had been the
herald of those brilliant and meteoric successes which flashed forth
from the gloom of the Revolution of France.

You are aware, dear Gertrude, how many in the French as well as the
English troops returned home from Egypt blinded with the ophthalmia of
that arid soil. Some of the young men in Lucille's town, who had joined
Napoleon's army, came back darkened by that fearful affliction, and
Lucille's alms and Lucille's aid and Lucille's sweet voice were ever
at hand for those poor sufferers, whose common misfortune touched so
thrilling a chord of her heart.

Her father was now dead, and she had only her mother to cheer amidst the
ills of age. As one evening they sat at work together, Madame le Tisseur
said, after a pause,--

"I wish, dear Lucille, thou couldst be persuaded to marry Justin; he
loves thee well, and now that thou art yet young, and hast many years
before thee, thou shouldst remember that when I die thou wilt be alone."

"Ah, cease, dearest mother, I never can marry now; and as for love--once
taught in the bitter school in which I have learned the knowledge of
myself--I cannot be deceived again."

"My Lucille, you do not know yourself. Never was woman loved if Justin
does not love you; and never did lover feel with more real warmth how
worthily he loved."

And this was true; and not of Justin alone, for Lucille's modest
virtues, her kindly temper, and a certain undulating and feminine grace,
which accompanied all her movements, had secured her as many conquests
as if she had been beautiful. She had rejected all offers of marriage
with a shudder; without even the throb of a flattered vanity. One
memory, sadder, was also dearer to her than all things; and something
sacred in its recollections made her deem it even a crime to think of
effacing the past by a new affection.

"I believe," continued Madame le Tisseur, angrily, "that thou still
thinkest fondly of him from whom only in the world thou couldst have
experienced ingratitude."

"Nay, Mother," said Lucille, with a blush and a slight sigh, "Eugene is
married to another."

While thus conversing, they heard a gentle and timid knock at the door;
the latch was lifted. "This," said the rough voice of a _commissionaire_
of the town, "this, monsieur, is the house of Madame le Tisseur, and
_voila made