"So my husband has made up his mind," wrote Julie Despois. "He ended the conversation by repeating poor Captain Magniez' noble declaration: 'I prefer to be shot rather than commit sacrilege.'--If this thing happens to us, we shall be very poor, my dear friend. The education of our three sons will be seriously endangered. But I could do nothing but say to him: 'You are right. We are Christian folk. We have founded a Christian family. God help us!'--And you will recognize my dear Despois in this. His only anxiety is for his officers. He doesn't want to see the hecatomb at Saint-Servan repeated.--'If they call on me for sappers to break in the church doors, I shall refuse. I sha'n't give the civil authorities time to telegraph for further orders. I shall order all my men to remount, and return to Saint-Mihiel. In this way I shall be sure of being the only one to be disciplined.'--You see, Valentine, what a sad time we are passing through, so that we can't turn our minds to any other subject! In all the officers' families, nothing else is thought of. We shouldn't talk about anything else if we didn't know that to-day an orderly may be an informer listened to at headquarters. We are all wondering when these two inventories will be taken, and to whom they will be entrusted. Will anything happen or not? God grant that we are imagining chimæras, and that everything will go off peacefully, as it has in so many places! Whatever happens, I am writing down these conversations with my husband so that my sons may have them some day, when he and I are no more. They will see what sort of man their father was, and that their mother understood him." Landri read the last sentence again and again. The captain's magnanimous determination made it possible for him to have no fear of consequences if Despois were in command.--But what followed? How could he fail to make a comparison between that simple-hearted helpmate of a gallant officer, devoted to her husband, so proud to esteem and admire him,--and another woman? Between those children who found at their humble fireside no reason for aught save respect,--and another child? Why had not his own mother understood the man whose name she bore? Why had she betrayed him? Why was a son born of that treachery? And why was not that son, who knew nothing of that horror for so many years, left in ignorance forever? Upon what trivial chances our destinies depend! Suppose that the train from Clermont had reached Paris an hour late yesterday? Doubtless Landri would have found the invalid of Rue de Solferino unconscious. The physician would not have let him in. He would have known nothing. He would not have had to undergo this inward agony which everything renewed--and when would it end? Oh, never! never!