uld_ they bear it, if their loved boy, their one
child, upon whom all their affections and all their hopes were
centred, was enrolled and taken rudely from them against his will, as
against theirs, to be a soldier? How could they support this cruel
bereavement at an age when, life having lost all its sweets for them,
they lived but in the happiness and in the presence of their boy, and,
like weak plants drooping toward the earth, were kept from falling
only by the young and vigorous prop beside them?

Had it come to this, that after all the projects, all the vows, all
the prayers, all the charming aspirations made for the one hope of
their declining years, the simple hazard of a figured paper was to be
called upon to realize the dreams of their lives or to blast all their
cherished schemes in a moment? to decide whether they should be happy
or eternally afflicted, or, in short, whether they should continue to
live or hasten quickly to their graves; for a seven years' separation
would be an eternity to them, and how could they expect to drag
themselves through it?

They were sad moments, those in which the parents asked themselves
these questions, looking woefully before them, and neglecting the
happiness they might enjoy in the present to mourn over its possible
loss in the future; counting the hours as they raced by, and turning
pale at the risks their son was to face, as though his hand were
already in the urn and his fingers grasping the little ticket upon
which was inscribed his destiny.

Ah, how often had they seen it in their dreams, that dreadful mahogany
cylinder turning lazily upon its pivot and rolling in its womb, along
with that of a hundred others, the fate of all that was dear to them
on earth! How often, too, had their poor brains, racked and fired by
doubt, fear and anguish, followed their child as he stood beside it,
and grown dizzy as they watched him plunge his hand through its lid
and tear open the little white slip which might be his sentence of
slavery, his order of exile, or--O God! who knows?--his
death-warrant!

One night the father and mother had started up in their sleep
together: they had dreamt that all was over: giddy with terror, they
had rushed into Henri's room. Thank Heaven! he was still there, and
asleep: they knelt by his bed and wept.

"Mother," he said on awaking, "I've been dreaming that they had taken
me."

Another night Madeleine saw herself in a field somewhere. All arou