she
threw herself on her sister's neck, and wept. Poor girls! the Golden City
of their dreams was Paris, with their father in it--Paris, the marvellous
city of joys and festivals, through all of which the orphans had beheld
the radiant and smiling countenance of their sire! But, alas! the
Beautiful City had been changed into a place of tears, and death, and
mourning. The same terrible pestilence which had struck down their mother
in the heart of Siberia, seemed to have followed them like a dark and
fatal cloud, which, always hovering above them, hid the mild blue of the
sky, and the joyous light of the sun.

The Golden City of their dreams! It was the place, where perhaps one day
their father would present to them two young lovers, good and fair as
themselves. "They love you," he was to say; "they are worthy of you. Let
each of you have a brother, and me two sons." Then what chaste,
enchanting confusion for those two orphans, whose hearts, pure as
crystal, had never reflected any image but that of Gabriel, the celestial
messenger sent by their mother to protect them!

We can therefore understand the painful emotion of Blanche, when she
heard her sister repeat, with bitter melancholy, those words which
described their whole situation: "I think of the Golden City of our
dreams!"

"Who knows?" proceeded Blanche, drying her sister's tears; "perhaps,
happiness may yet be in store for us."

"Alas! if we are not happy with our father by us--shall we ever be so?"

"Yes, when we rejoin our mother," said Blanche, lifting her eyes to
heaven.

"Then, sister, this dream may be a warning--it is so like that we had in
Germany."

"The difference being that then the Angel Gabriel came down from heaven
to us, and that this time he takes us from earth, to our mother."

"And this dream will perhaps come true, like the other, my sister. We
dreamt that the Angel Gabriel would protect us, and he came to save us
from the shipwreck."

"And, this time, we dream that he will lead us to heaven. Why should not
that happen also?"

"But to bring that about, sister, our Gabriel, who saved us from the
shipwreck, must die also. No, no; that must not happen. Let us pray that
it may not happen."

"No, it will not happen--for it is only Gabriel's good angel, who is so
like him, that we saw in our dreams."

"Sister, dear, how singular is this dream!--Here, as in Germany, we have
both dreamt the same--three times, the very same!"

"It is tr