"Now the beggars want to deceive us! the miserable race! they ought to be driven out, every one of them!" Catherine above all could not endure them, and when Mother Gredel came and talked as before about our good King, Louis XVIII., we allowed her to talk out of respect, but we pitied her for being so blind to the real interests of the country. It must be remembered, too, that these emigres, ministers, and princes, conducted themselves in the most insolent manner possible toward us. If the Count d'Artois and his sons had put themselves at the head of the Vendeeans and Bretons, and marched on Paris and had been victorious, they would have had reason to say, "We are masters, and will make laws for you." But to be driven out at first, and to be brought back by the Prussians and the Russians, and then to come and humiliate us, that was contemptible, and the older I grow the more I am confirmed in that idea--it was shameful! Zebede came to see us from time to time, and he knew all that was in the gazette. It was from us that he first learned that the young emigres had driven General Vandamme from the presence of the King. This old soldier, who had just returned from a Russian prison, and whom all the army respected in spite of his misfortune at Kulm, they conducted from the royal presence, and told him that was not his place. Vandamme had been colonel of a regiment at Pfalzbourg, and you cannot imagine the indignation of the people at this news. And it was Zebede who told us, that processes had been made out against the generals on half-pay, and that their letters were opened at the post, that they might appear like traitors. He told us a little afterward that they were going to send away the daughters of the old officers who were at the school of St. Denis and give them a pension of two hundred francs; and later still, that the emigres alone would have the right to put their sons in the schools at "St. Cyr" and "la Fleche" to be educated as officers, while the people's sons would remain soldiers at five centimes (one cent) a day for centuries to come. The gazettes told the same stories, but Zebede knew a great many other details--the soldiers knew everything. I could not describe Zebede's face to you as he sat behind the stove, with the end of his black pipe between his teeth, recounting all these misfortunes. His great nose would turn pale, and the muscles would twitch around the corners of his light gray eyes, and he would pretend to laugh from time to time, and murmur, "It moves, it moves." "And what do the other soldiers think of all this?" said Father Goulden.