"Oh, brother, brother! I feel as if a frightful ferment of hatred and vengeance were gathering and rising in my breast!" exclaimed the merchant's son in a hollow voice. "If I could have one day--one single day--to pay back for all this--even if I were to spend the rest of my life in torment." "Patience, brother!" answered George. "Everyone has his turn--patience!" "Children," interposed Madam Lebrenn in a grave and melancholy voice, "you speak of justice--do not mix words of vengeance or of hatred with it. Were your father here--and he is ever with us in the spirit--he would tell you that the right does not hate--does not revenge itself. Hatred and vengeance make the head giddy. Those who persecuted your father and his party with such ferocity are a proof of what I say. Pity them--do not follow their example." "And yet to see what we see, mother!" cried the youth. "To think that father, our dear father, a man of such integrity and courage, of such tried patriotism, finds himself at this hour in a convict's prison! To know that our enemies derive an insane joy from the prolongation of his undeserved sufferings!" "In what way does that affect the honor, courage or patriotism of your father, my child?" suggested Madam Lebrenn. "Is it in the power of anybody in the world to stain that which is pure? to disgrace what is great? to turn an honest man into a felon? Do you imagine your father is honored less by his unjust sentence and the mark of the chain that he is now made to drag than by the wounds that he received in 1830? Will he not, when the hour of justice shall have sounded, step out of prison even more beloved, even more venerated than ever before? Oh, my children! We may weep over your father's absence, but let us never forget that every day of his martyrdom exalts and does him honor!" "You are right, mother," replied Sacrovir, sighing heavily. "Thoughts of hatred and vengeance injure the heart." "Oh!" exclaimed Velleda sadly. "Poor father! He looked forward to to-morrow's date with so much impatience!" "To to-morrow?" George asked his wife. "Why so?" "To-morrow is my son's birthday," explained Madam Lebrenn. "To-morrow, September 11, he will be twenty-one years of age. For several reasons that anniversary was to be a family holiday to us." Hardly had Madam Lebrenn uttered these words when the street door bell was heard to ring. "Who can it be, so late? It is nearly midnight," observed Madam Lebrenn. "Go and see who it is, Jeanike." "I shall go, madam!" cried Gildas heroically, rising from his seat. "There may be some danger." "I do not think so," replied Madam Lebrenn; "but you may go." A few minutes later Gildas returned holding in his hand a letter that he delivered to Madam Lebrenn, saying: "Madam, a messenger brought this--there is no answer." Hardly had the merchant's wife cast her eyes upon the envelope when she cried: "Children--a letter from your father!"