The young girl dropped her eyes and smiled, then said: “Ah, I was about to forget, Master Peyrou, to ask you if you thought that monsieur, the commander, and the Reverend Father Elzear would arrive here for the Christmas holidays, as the baron hopes. He is so anxious to see his two brothers again--do you know that Christmas has been twice celebrated at Maison-Forte without them?” At the mention of the commander, the face of the watchman took on an expression of profound melancholy. “If God grants my most earnest prayers, my child, they will both come, but, alas, Father Elzear has gone to redeem captives in Algiers, as a worthy and courageous brother of mercy, and the faith of those Barbary people is perfidious!” “Yes, Master Peyrou, as Father Elzear learned by experience when he was kept in the convict-prison among slaves for one year! At his age, too, to suffer so much!” “And without a murmur,--without losing his adorable saintliness--” “Speaking of them, Master Peyrou, why is the commander’s galley, instead of being white and gold like the gallant galleys of the king, and of monseigneur, the Duke of Guise, always painted in black like a coffin? Why are its sails and masts black? Really, nothing looks more solemn, and his sailors and his soldiers, they look as hard and severe as Spanish monks; and then the commander himself looks so sad. I never saw a smile on his pale face but once, and that was when he arrived at Maison-Forte and embraced monseigneur and my mistress. Yet, my God, what a melancholy smile! Is it not strange, Master Peyrou, and all the more so because Luquin told me, the other day, that when he was artilleryman on board _La Guisarde_, the admiral’s galley, in the waters of the Levant, many a time he has seen the commanders and captains of Malta at Naples, and notwithstanding the severity of their order, they were as merry as other officers.” The watchman for some moments seemed as if he no longer heard the girl; his head had fallen upon his breast, he was lost in profound meditation, and when Stephanette bade him farewell, he responded only by an affectionate gesture of the hand. Some time after the departure of the young girl, he went into his cabin, opened the carved ebony box he found there, sprung the secret lock of a double bottom, and took out of it a little casket chased with silver; an embassed Maltese cross ornamented its cover. For a long time he gazed at this casket with sorrowful attention; the sight of it seemed to awaken the most bitter memories. Then, assuring himself that this mysterious trust was still intact, he shut the doors of the ebony chest and, like a dreamer, returned to his seat at the door of his cabin. CHAPTER V. THE BETROTHED.