"Oh, that can't be!" exclaimed the boys. "Married at fifteen! And our Marie is--" Here Robin remembered that he must not allude to Charles, and stopped. "She was born on the day of the great earthquake at Lisbon--" "Is that where she lives?" "No, I think not. Whether Lisbon is in Germany, I am not certain; but I don't think she and her mother were in the earthquake; but I know that it happened the day she was born, and that it hurts her spirits to think of it. She takes it for a sign that she will live unhappy, or die in some dreadful way." "You have not served out of France," observed Randolphe, as he came up, with the third soldier, and seated himself on the bench. "You have not seen either Lisbon or Germany, I suppose; for I can tell you that Lisbon is a good way off from any place where this princess has been. Well, I am sorry to hear anything hurts her spirits; but, to be sure, the great earthquake was an awful thing." "I am thinking," said Jerome, "that a good many thousand people must have been born that same day; I hope they are not all troubled with bad spirits. It would be a curious sight to see so many people of fifteen all low about the manner of their lives and deaths." "She is very low sometimes, however," observed his comrade. "When she was leaving the city she lived in, she wept so that nothing was ever seen like it. She covered her eyes sometimes with her handkerchief, and sometimes with her hands; and looked out many times from the coach-window, to see her mother's palace once more." Everyone thought there was no great wonder in this. A young girl leaving her own country for ever, to be the wife of a foreign prince whom she had never seen, and could not tell whether she should like, might well be in tears, Randolphe said. Had she cheered up yet? "Yes, indeed," said Jerome, "that she has. When she saw the fine pavilion on the frontier, she was pleased enough." The boys wanted to hear about the pavilion. "It was there," said Jerome, "that she was to be made a French princess of. It was a very grand sort of tent, that cost more money than I can reckon." Randolphe sighed. "There were three rooms," continued Jerome; "a large one in the middle, and a smaller one at each end. In one of these smaller rooms she left everything she had worn, even to her very stockings, and all her German attendants; and then she went through to the other, where she found her French attendants, and her fine French wardrobe." "And shall we see her in some of her new clothes?" asked Marc. "Certainly." And Jerome went on describing the princess's dress, and told all he had heard of her jewels, and furs, and laces, till the soldiers observed that their host had sighed very often. One of the soldiers then said that it was enough to make poor men like themselves sad to hear of such luxury, when they were hungry in the long summer days, and cold all the long winter nights.