“Still again, I am he. At your age I grew weary of the cloister. Disguised as a sailor I escaped to the United States; and disguised as a sailor I have knocked about the world ever since. My own country is the one I avoid most of all. I suppose I never should have known aught of Marguerite’s children if the little Julie had not come to me just as she did. Indeed, although she told me her name, I never suspected who she might be until she showed me her poor mother’s cross. In the cloister one is buried from the world. I did not know whom my sister married. He, too, is dead, the child told me. I mean your father.” “General Leblanc, of the Italian campaign—you have never heard of him? It was there that he lost his life.” “Poor Marguerite! She was coming to you, it seems, and fell ill upon the way.” “I first learned it from Julie. I had received no tidings for months. Our home was in the region which has fallen into the enemy’s clutches. Mails, of course, were stopped. What other reason for the silence? Mon Dieu! the agony of suspense! I should have returned immediately when the republic was declared, if I could have seen my way—” “And you two might have sought each other till your locks were gray—and probably would never have met.” “Mon oncle, please tell to me also those strange, sad things you have been telling my brother now for a long time in that dreadful English, till suddenly, at this moment, he looks frightened.” Julien went over to the little questioner and kissed her wondering eyes. “Thy uncle, sister—dear angel!—has been telling me that he is also _my_ uncle.” [7] That’s too much! THE VOICES. “Come now, my children,” said Dame Nature once, in the morning of the world, “let me hear your voices, that I may judge which of all is the most musical.”