Mademoiselle Velleda Lebrenn sat by the side of her mother. So marked was the girl's exceptional beauty that none could behold her without being struck by its radiance. Her mien was at once proud, ingenuous and thoughtful. Nothing more limpid than the blue of her eyes; nothing more dazzling than her complexion; nothing loftier than the carriage of her charming head, crowned with long tresses of brown hair that here and there gleamed in gold. Tall, lithesome and strong without masculinity, the sight and nature of the beauty explained the paternal whim that caused the merchant to give his child the name Velleda, the name of an illustrious heroine in the patriotic annals of the Gauls. Mademoiselle Lebrenn could be readily imagined with her brow wreathed in oak leaves, clad in a long white robe belted with brass, and vibrating the gold harp of the female druids, those wonderful teachers of our forefathers who, exalting them with the thought of the immortality of the soul, taught them to die with so much grandeur and serenity! In Mademoiselle Lebrenn the type was reproduced of those Gallic women, clad in black, with arms "so wonderfully white and nervy," as Ammienus Marcellinus expresses it, who followed their husbands to battle, with their children in their chariots of war, encouraged the combatants with word and gesture, and mingled among them in the hour of victory or of defeat, ever preferring death to slavery and shame. Those whose minds were not stored with these tragic and glorious remembrances of the past saw in Mademoiselle Lebrenn a beautiful girl of eighteen, coiffed in her magnificent head of brown hair, and whose elegant shape outlined itself under a pretty high-necked robe of light blue poplin, which set off a little orange cravat tied around her neat, white collar. While Madam Lebrenn was casting up her accounts and her daughter sewed, occasionally exchanging a few words with her mother, Gildas Pakou, the shop-boy, stood at the door. The youngster was uneasy and greatly disturbed in mind, so very much disturbed that it never occurred to him, as was otherwise his wont, to recite promiscuously favorite passages from his beloved Breton songs. The worthy fellow was preoccupied with just one thought--the strange contrast that he found between the reality and his mother's promises, she having informed him that St. Denis Street in general, and the house of Monsieur Lebrenn in particular, were particularly quiet and peaceful spots. Gildas suddenly turned about and said to Madam Lebrenn in a high state of alarm: "Madam! Madam! Listen!" "What is it, Gildas?" asked Madam Lebrenn, proceeding unperturbed to make her entries in the large ledger. "But, madam, it is the drum! Listen! Besides--Oh, good God!--I see some men running!" "What of it, Gildas," returned Madam Lebrenn; "let them run."