Here Raoul, who seemed absorbed in gloomy reflections, halted before the hotel in which the Contessa di Rimini lodged, and with a nod to his brother, and a polite, if not cordial salutation to Victor, entered the _porte cochere_. "Your brother seems out of spirits,--a pleasing contrast to the uproarious mirth with which Parisians welcome the advance of calamity." "Raoul, as you know, is deeply religious. He regards the defeat we have sustained, and the peril that threatens us, as the beginning of a divine chastisement, justly incurred by our sins--I mean, the sins of Paris. In vain my father reminds him of Voltaire's story, in which the ship goes down with a _fripon_ on board. In order to punish the _fripon_, the honest folks are drowned." "Is your father going to remain on board the ship, and share the fate of the other honest folks?" "_Pas si bete_. He is off to Dieppe for sea-bathing. He says that Paris has grown so dirty since the 4th September, that it is only fit for the feet of the Unwashed. He wished my mother to accompany him; but she replies, 'No; there are already too many wounded not to need plenty of nurses.' She is assisting to inaugurate a society of ladies in aid of the _Soeurs de Charite_. Like Raoul, she is devout, but she has not his superstitions. Still his superstitions are the natural reaction of a singularly earnest and pure nature from the frivolity and corruption which, when kneaded well up together with a slice of sarcasm, Paris calls philosophy." "And what, my dear Enguerrand, do you propose to do?" "That depends on whether we are really besieged. If so, of course I become a soldier." "I hope not a National Guard?" "I care not in what name I fight, so that I fight for France." As Enguerrand said these simple words, his whole countenance, seemed changed. The crest rose; his eyes sparkled; the fair and delicate beauty which had made him the darling of women--the joyous sweetness of expression and dainty grace of high breeding which made him the most popular companion to men,--were exalted in a masculine nobleness of aspect, from which a painter might have taken hints for a study of the young Achilles separated for ever from effeminate companionship at the sight of the weapons of war. De Mauleon gazed on him admiringly. We have seen that he shared the sentiments uttered--had resolved on the same course of action. But it was with the tempered warmth of a man who seeks to divest his thoughts and his purpose of the ardour of romance, and who, in serving his country, calculates on the gains to his own ambition. Nevertheless he admired in Enguerrand the image of his own impulsive and fiery youth. "And you, I presume," resumed Enguerrand, "will fight too, but rather with pen than with sword."