“Yes; and he will be here. You have seen him, monsieur? Tell me, has imprisonment made him old as sorrow has left me?” “It was an old man that I saw in the dungeon.” “Yet my husband should have been in the prime of life; and I, when he went away, monsieur, I was not much older than Marguerite, and so like her.” Monsieur Jacques glanced at the lined and anxious face of the middle-aged woman, from which perpetual grief had swept away all the bloom, and hardened the beauty into a sad expression of endurance. Then his eyes turned upon Marguerite, more lovely a thousand times than he had ever seen her before; for the happiness had left bloom upon her cheeks, and lay like sunshine in the violet softness of her eyes. The contrast struck him painfully. Was grief then so much more powerful than time? How many women in France even then suffered as she had done? Was this to be a universal result? Would oppression in the end destroy all the sweets of womanhood, by forcing a sex, naturally kind and gentle, into resistance wilder and fiercer, because more unreasoning, than men ever waged on each other? These thoughts disturbed the man. In admitting the unnatural influence of women into their revolutionary clubs, had they not already begun to uproot all that was holy in social life? In order to gain liberty, were they not giving up religion, and trampling down all the beautiful influences of home life? He looked at Marguerite where she stood, in all the gentle purity of young maidenhood, wondering if she could ever be drawn into the vortex of those revolutionary clubs in which he was a leading spirit. Why not? Others as young, as lovely, and as good, had followed the cry of liberty and equality into places quite as dangerous and unnatural. Might not the time arrive when in the turmoil and disorganization of a government which France was beginning to hate, even he might seize on any help, to carry out the wild idea of liberty which was driving the people of France mad. Might not he urge her, and creatures innocent and enthusiastic like her, into the surrender of everything that makes a woman’s life beautiful, in order to obtain that political liberty which France never knew how to use or keep. Monsieur Jacques sat moodily in a corner of the room, and thought these things over as Marguerite knelt by her mother, and told her in detail all that had happened during her sojourn at Versailles. He saw that the narrative did more to convince the mother that her husband’s release was a reality than all his reasoning could have done. Once or twice he observed a faint smile quiver across that firm mouth, while Marguerite caught the infection as flowers meet the sunshine, and laughed while telling Dame Tillery’s mishap. Jacques felt the influence of this low, rippling laugh, a sound he had never heard in that gloomy place before, and thought to himself how naturally happiness brought back all the soft, sweet traits of womanhood in these two persons.