humoredly: "What do you want, my lad?"
"It's not me, my lord duke!" answered Loony, laying his hand on his breast, as if it were taking a vow, so that his feather-brush fell down from under his arm.The laughter of the girls redoubled.
"It is not you?" said the marshal.
"Here! Spoil-sport!" Dagobert called, for the honest dog seemed to have a secret dislike for the pretended idiot, and approached him with an angry air.
"No, my lord duke, it is not me!" resumed Loony."It is the footman who told me to tell M.Dagobert, when I brought up the wood to tell my lord duke, as I was coming up with the basket, that M.Robert wants to see him."
The girls laughed still more at this new stupidity.But, at the name of Robert, Marshal Simon started.
M.Robert was the secret emissary of Rodin, with regard to the possible, but adventurous, enterprise of attempting the liberation of Napoleon II.
After a moment's silence, the marshal, whose face was still radiant with joy and happiness, said to Loony: "Beg M.Robert to wait for me a moment in my study."
"Yes, my lord duke," answered Loony, bowing almost to the ground.
The simpleton withdrew, and the marshal said to his daughters, in a joyous tone, "You see, that, in a moment like this, one does not leave one's children, even for M.Robert."
"Oh! that's right, father!" cried Blanche, gayly; "for I was already very angry with this M.Robert."
"Have you pen and paper at hand?" asked the marshal.
"Yes, father; there on the table," said Rose, hastily, as she pointed to a little desk near one of the windows, towards which the marshal now advanced rapidly.
From motives of delicacy, the girls remained where they were, close to the fireplace, and caressed each other tenderly, as if to congratulate themselves in private on the unexpected happiness of this day.
The marshal seated himself at the desk, and made a sign to Dagobert to draw near.
While he wrote rapidly a few words in a firm hand, he said to the soldier with a smile, in so low a tone that it was impossible for his daughters to hear: "Do you know what I had almost resolved upon, before entering this room?"
"What, general?"
"To blow my brains out.It is to my children that I owe my life." And the marshal continued writing.
Dagobert started at this communication, and then replied, also in a whisper: "It would not have been with your pistols.I took off the caps."
The marshal turned round hastily, and looked at him with an air of surprise.But the soldier only nodded his head affirmatively, and added:
"Thank heaven, we have now done with all those ideas!"
The marshal's only answer was to glance at his children, his eyes swimming with tenderness, and sparkling with delight; then, sealing the note he had written, he gave it to the soldier, and said to him, "Give that to M.Robert.I will see him to-morrow."
Dagobert took the letter, and went out.Returning towards his daughters, the marshal joyfully extended his arms to them, and said, "Now, young ladies, two nice kisses for having sacrificed M.Robert to you.Have I not earned them?" And Rose and Blanche threw themselves on their father's neck.
About the time that these events were taking place at Paris, two travellers, wide apart from each other, exchanged mysterious thoughts through the breadth of space.
End The Wandering Jew, Volume 11
