his was the affair of an instant only, and conversation was
immediately resumed with increased vivacity.

But to-day the usual animation was wanting.

No sounds came from the little knots of men gathered here and there, not
an oath, not a laugh. Between buyers and sellers, one did not overhear
a single one of those interminable discussions, punctuated with the
popular oaths, such as: "By my faith in God!" or "May the devil burn
me!"

They were not talking, they were whispering together. A gloomy
sadness was visible upon each face; lips were placed cautiously at the
listener's ear; anxiety could be read in every eye.

One scented misfortune in the very air. Only a month had elapsed since
Louis XVIII. had been, for the second time, installed in the Tuileries
by a triumphant coalition.

The earth had not yet had time to swallow the sea of blood that flowed
at Waterloo; twelve hundred thousand foreign soldiers desecrated the
soil of France; the Prussian General Muffling was Governor of Paris.

And the peasantry of Sairmeuse trembled with indignation and fear.

This king, brought back by the allies, was no less to be dreaded than
the allies themselves.

To them this great name of Bourbon signified only a terrible burden of
taxation and oppression.

Above all, it signified ruin--for there was scarcely one among them who
had not purchased some morsel of government land; and they were assured
now that all estates were to be returned to the former proprietors, who
had emigrated after the overthrow of the Bourbons.

Hence, it was with a feverish curiosity that most of them clustered
around a young man who, only two days before, had returned from the
army.

With tears of rage in his eyes, he was recounting the shame and the
misery of the invasion.

He told of the pillage at Versailles, the exactions at Orleans, and the
pitiless requisitions that had stripped the people of everything.

"And these accursed foreigners to whom the traitors have delivered
us, will not go so long as a shilling or a bottle of wine is left in
France!" he exclaimed.

As he said this he shook his clinched fist menacingly at a white flag
that floated from the tower.

His generous anger won the close attention of his auditors, and they
were still listening to him with undiminished interest, when the sound
of a horse's hoofs resounded upon the stones of the only street in
Sairmeuse.

A shudder traversed the crowd. The same fear stopped the