“Yes; but not here, not here,” cried Madame Gosner, pressing a hand upon her heart. “Ah! this is terrible—we shall meet and not know each other. We shall look into each other’s eyes and see nothing there but wondering sorrow.” “But there will be love also,” murmured the girl. “Love? Yes, but never again the old love; regret, compassion, that infinite tenderness which springs out of infinite sorrow will be ours; but the darkness of the past will forever cast its shadows upon us.” “Not so, mamma. We will leave this terrible country; back in your own home, you and my poor father will yet find that life has its sunshine.” “But this is my own native land.” “I know it, mamma; but it has only given you sorrow.” “And what have I given it? Nothing but the selfishness of my grief.” “What else had you to give? Alas! what else?” “My life, my energies, every thought of my brain, every pulse of my heart; but I was selfish—one idea filled my existence. In my love for him all other duties, all other wrongs merged themselves. I was a wife, and could not be a patriot.” “God be thanked that it is so!” said Marguerite. “The woman who loves her husband and her home best is a patriot in spite of herself, for she gives strength and power to the man whose duty it is to govern.” Madame Gosner kissed the lips that uttered this noble truth, and lay back upon her pillow silent and thoughtful. Then she murmured to herself, “He will know, he will decide.” Marguerite was also silent, the words uttered so passionately by her mother troubled her. Did she, indeed, think with so much regret of the country they were in? Could that overbalance the gratitude for the royal clemency? Could she accept this noble act of pardon with a feeling of revolt in her mind? “Henceforth,” said Marguerite, with gentle firmness, “it will be our duty to pray for the King and Queen of France, to live for them, die for them, if need be.” The mother was silent; to her this obligation of eternal gratitude was a question of sacrifice. In her heart she loved France; but her life in Paris had gradually uprooted all love of royalty there. To save her own life she would not have asked mercy at the hands of a Bourbon king; to save her husband she had done more, sunk upon her knees at the roadside, only to be covered with mud by the royal cavalcade as it swept by her. She remembered, though her daughter did not, that the pardon had been granted as a reward for services rendered to the queen, not from an absolute sense of justice. With all the passions and prejudices of a Jacobin strong in her bosom, it was hard for this woman to accept simple obligations of gratitude from a king she had learned to hate, and a queen slander and misrepresentation had taught her to despise.