was only current in the days of that army. "This is beyond belief,"
cried he. "Come, gredin, you have at least had one piece of good
fortune: you've fallen precisely into the hands of one who can deal with
you. Your regiment?"

"The Ninth Hussars."

"Your name."

"Tiernay."

"Tiernay; that's not a French name?"

"Not originally; we were Irish once."

"Irish!" said he, in a different tone from what he had hitherto used.
"Any relative of a certain Comte Maurice de Tiernay, who once served in
the Royal Guard?"

"His son, sir."

"What--his son! Art certain of this, lad? You remember your mother's
name, then; what was it?"

"I never knew which was my mother," said I. "Mademoiselle de la
Lasterie, or--"

He did not suffer me to finish, but throwing his arms around my neck,
pressed me to his bosom.

"You are little Maurice, then," said he, "the son of my old and valued
comrade! Only think of it, Laure--I was that boy's godfather."

Here was a sudden change in my fortunes; nor was it without a great
effort that I could credit the reality of it, as I saw myself seated
between the colonel and his fair companion, both of whom overwhelmed me
with attention. It turned out that Colonel Mahon had been a
fellow-guardsman with my father, for whom he had ever preserved the
warmest attachment. One of the few survivors of the "Garde du Corps," he
had taken service with the republic, and was already reputed as one of
the most distinguished cavalry officers.

"Strange enough, Maurice," said he to me, "there was something in your
look and manner, as you spoke to me there, that recalled your poor
father to my memory; and, without knowing or suspecting why, I suffered
you to bandy words with me, while at another moment I would have ordered
you to be ironed and sent to prison."

Of my mother, of whom I wished much to learn something, he would not
speak, but adroitly changed the conversation to the subject of my own
adventures, and these he made me recount from the beginning. If the lady
enjoyed all the absurdities of my checkered fortune with a keen sense of
the ridiculous, the colonel apparently could trace in them but so many
resemblances to my father's character, and constantly broke out into
exclamations of "How like him!" "Just what he would have done himself!"
"His own very words!" and so on.

It was only in a pause of the conversation, as the clock on the
mantle-piece struck eleven, that I was aware of the lateness of