ce, Rose uplifted her
eyes, now filled with tears, "Why does this thought," she said,
trembling, "affect us so deeply, sister? My heart sinks within me, as if
it were really to happen to us."

"I feel as frightened as you yourself. Alas! were we both to be lost in
this immense city, what would become of us?"

"Do not let us give way to such ideas, Blanche! Are we not here in
Dagobert's house, in the midst of good people?"

"And yet, sister," said Rose, with a pensive air, "it is perhaps good for
us to have had this thought."

"Why so?"

"Because we shall now find this poor lodging all the better, as it
affords a shelter from all our fears. And when, thanks to our labor, we
are no longer a burden to any one, what more can we need until the
arrival of our father?"

"We shall want for nothing--there you are right--but still, why did this
thought occur to us, and why does it weigh so heavily on our minds?"

"Yes, indeed--why? Are we not here in the midst of friends that love us?
How could we suppose that we should ever be left alone in Paris? It is
impossible that such a misfortune should happen to us--is it not, my dear
sister?"

"Impossible!" said Rose, shuddering. "If the day before we reached that
village in Germany, where poor Jovial was killed, any one had said to us:
'To-morrow, you will be in prison'--we should have answered as now: 'It
is impossible. Is not Dagobert here to protect us; what have we to fear?'
And yet, sister, the day after we were in prison at Leipsic."

"Oh! do not speak thus, my dear sister! It frightens me."

By a sympathetic impulse, the orphans took one another by the hand, while
they pressed close together, and looked around with involuntary fear. The
sensation they felt was in fact deep, strange, inexplicable, and yet
lowering--one of those dark presentiments which come over us, in spite of
ourselves--those fatal gleams of prescience, which throw a lurid light on
the mysterious profundities of the future.

Unaccountable glimpses of divination! often no sooner perceived than
forgotten--but, when justified by the event, appearing with all the
attributes of an awful fatality!

The daughters of Marshal Simon were still absorbed in the mournful
reverie which these singular thoughts had awakened, when Dagobert's wife,
returning from her son's chamber, entered the room with a painfully
agitated countenance.

CHAPTER XLVII.

THE LETTER.

Frances' agitation was so perceptible