Evening was drawing near and rosy streaks were coming gradually into the sky. A breath was stirring over the river, and at the tops of the trees the leaves were quivering. A small windmill, which served for a sign over the door of a tavern, began to turn round. "Well, Renee, how have you enjoyed the water?" asked one of the rowers as the young girl reached the steps placed at the back of the boat. "Oh, very much, thanks, Denoisel," she answered. "You are a nice one," said the other man, "you swim out so far--I began to get uneasy. And what about Reverchon? Ah, yes, here he is." II Charles Louis Mauperin was born in 1787. He was the son of a barrister who was well known and highly respected throughout Lorraine and Barrois, and at the age of sixteen he entered the military school at Fontainebleau. He became sublieutenant in the Thirty-fifth Regiment of infantry, and afterward, as lieutenant in the same corps, he signalized himself in Italy by a courage which was proof against everything. At Pordenone, although wounded, surrounded by a troop of the enemy's cavalry and challenged to lay down arms, he replied to the challenge by giving the command to charge the enemy, by killing with his own hand one of the horsemen who was threatening him and opening a passage with his men, until, overcome by numbers and wounded on the head by two more sword-thrusts, he fell down covered with blood and was left on the field for dead. After being captain in the Second Regiment of the Mediterranean, he became captain aide-de-camp to General Roussel d'Hurbal, went through the Russian campaign with him, and was shot through the right shoulder the day after the battle of Moscow. In 1813, at the age of twenty-six, he was an officer of the Legion of Honour and major in the army. He was looked upon as one of the commanding officers with the most brilliant prospects, when the battle of Waterloo broke his sword for him and dashed his hopes to the ground. He was put on half-pay, and, with Colonel Sauset and Colonel Maziau, he entered into the Bonapartist conspiracy of the _Bazar francais_. Condemned to death by default, as a member of the managing committee, by the Chamber of Peers, constituted into a court of justice, he was concealed by his friends and shipped off to America. On the voyage, not knowing how to occupy his active mind, he studied medicine with one of his fellow-passengers who intended taking his degree in America, and on arriving, Mauperin passed the necessary examinations with him. After spending two years in the United States, thanks to the friendship and influence of some of his former comrades, who had been taken again into active service, he obtained pardon and was allowed to return to France.