hand, and besides you would doubtless
regret to part with such a souvenir. I will make you this offer, leave
the watch with me, I will hang it in my window--it shall always be
yours--and I will advance you two hundred francs, which you shall repay
me when you take it away."

On hearing this, the hussar extended his two great hairy hands, as if
to embrace Father Goulden.

"You are a good patriot," he exclaimed, "Colin told us so. Ah! sir, I
shall never forget the service you have rendered me. This watch I
received from Prince Eugene for bravery in action, it is dear to me as
my own blood, but poverty----"

"Commandant!" exclaimed the other, turning pale.

"Colonel, permit me! we are old comrades together. They are starving
us, they treat us like Cossacks. They are too cowardly to shoot us
outright."

He could be heard all over the house. Catherine and I ran into the
kitchen in order not to see the sad spectacle. Mr. Goulden soothed
him, and we heard him say:

"Yes, yes, gentlemen, I know all that, and I put myself in your place."

"Come! Margarot, be quiet," said the colonel. And this went on for a
quarter of an hour.

At last we heard Mr. Goulden count out the money, and the hussar said:

"Thank you, sir, thank you! If ever you have occasion, remember the
Commandant Margarot."

We were glad to hear the door open, and to hear them go downstairs, for
Catherine and I were much pained by what we had heard and seen. We
went back to the room, and Mr. Goulden, who had been to show the
officers out, came back with his head bare. He was very much disturbed.

"These unhappy men are right," said he, "the conduct of the government
toward them is horrible, but it will have to pay for it sooner or
later."

We were sad all day, but Mr. Goulden showed me the watch and explained
its beauties, and told me, we ought always to have such models before
us, and then we hung it in our window.

From that moment the idea never left me that matters would end badly,
and that even if the emigres stopped here, they had done too much
mischief already. I could still hear the commandant exclaiming, that
they treated the army like Cossacks. All those processions and
expiations and sermons about the rebellion of twenty-five years, seemed
to me to be a terrible confusion, and I felt that the restoration of
the national property and the rebuilding of the convents would be
productive of no good.

X

It was about the