"I was your mother's servant three years, m'sieur--a very little child. I am nearly sixty years old, but my memory is good." "You remember my father, then?" "If I remember him! Do children forget such things?" "Were you here when he died, madame?" She clasped her hands together almost as one in prayer. Her voice was a sing-song, like that of a child reciting a learned lesson. "It was at nine o'clock on the Friday night. Ah! what a day, m'sieur! There had been cannon since the Sunday, and the streets full of mad people. I looked down from my window and saw the dead carried away. I was cold with a child's curiosity. When night came, m'sieur would not dine. He had been out all day helping the wounded, and all he would take was a little soup and wine. Then he went out again while madame and I were up in the front room watching the fires burn and listening to the cannon. M'sieur, the heavens opened that night! My soul shrank at the sight; I thought the end of the world had come. And I was but a child, and had lived such a little while." She paused and breathed almost convulsively, as though suffering the terrible hours again. Faber watched her without flinching. His swift imagination moved out there in the streets where his father worked amid the wounded. "And afterwards, madame--afterwards?" said Bertie Morris in French. She looked up at him almost angrily, the thread of the inspiration of memory broken. "It is so many years ago, m'sieur. I remember badly." Faber stepped across the room and laid his hand upon her arm. "How did my father die, madame? Remember, I am his son." "So very like him, m'sieur; he seems to stand beside me once more." "You remember the night--you cannot have forgotten it?" "No, no; it is all here. The heart knows, but the tongue will not speak." "Did you see him when they brought him in?" She quivered, as though the scene had been yester-night. "M'sieur, it passed so swiftly--death came to him while he walked. I saw Captain d'Arny upon a white horse--I heard m'sieur's voice--how well I knew it! Then someone spoke in anger, a rifle was fired, madame ran from me, her tears choking her so that she could not speak to me. They brought monsieur in and laid him on the sofa; your hand is touching it now. I remember that his hand was in madame's, his eyes hurt by the bright light of the chandelier. He begged for a little wine and I went to the buffet; my hand shook, and I could not open the bottle. When we had found a glass m'sieur was dead. How shall I tell you more?--m'sieur was dead." Her voice died down almost to a whisper; none of the others spoke for some minutes. It was still snowing, and a black cloud was over the city. Faber thought that it must have been just such a day when the Versaillese, drunk with victory, entered the Rue de Fleurus and found his father there. Some of them still lived and remembered the night. General d'Arny was such a one, and they were to meet to-morrow.