containing a number of women who had suddenly been seized with cholera.

These immense apartments, generously supplied for the purpose of a
temporary hospital, had been furnished with excessive luxury. The room
now occupied by the sick women, of whom we speak, had been used for a
ball-room. The white panels glittered with sumptuous gilding, and
magnificent pier-glasses occupied the spaces between the windows, through
which could be seen the fresh verdure of a pleasant garden, smiling
beneath the influence of budding May. In the midst of all this gilded
luxury, on a rich, inlaid floor of costly woods, were seen arranged in
regular order four rows of beds, of every shape and kind, from the humble
truckle-bed to the handsome couch in carved mahogany.

This long room was divided into two compartments by a temporary
partition, four or five feet in height. They had thus been able to manage
the four rows of beds. This partition finished at some little distance
from either end of the room, so as to leave an open space without beds,
for the volunteer attendants, when the sick did not require their aid. At
one of these extremities of the room was a lofty and magnificent marble
chimney piece, ornamented with gilt bronze. On the fire beneath, various
drinks were brewing for the patients. To complete the singular picture,
women of every class took their turns in attending upon the sick, to
whose sighs and groans they always responded with consoling words of hope
and pity. Such was the place, strange and mournful, that Rose and Blanche
entered together, hand in hand, a short time after Gabriel had displayed
such heroic courage in the struggle against Morok. Sister Martha
accompanied Marshal Simon's daughters. After speaking a few words to them
in a whisper, she pointed out to them the two divisions in which the beds
were arranged, and herself went to the other end of the room to give some
orders.

The orphans, still under the impression of the terrible danger from which
Gabriel had rescued them without their knowing it, were both excessively
pale; yet their eyes were expressive of firm resolution. They had
determined not only to perform what they considered an imperative duty,
but to prove themselves worthy of their valiant father; they were acting
too for their mother's sake, since they had been told that, dying in
Siberia without receiving the sacrament, her eternal felicity might
depend on the proofs they gave of Christian devo