“Wait, wait a moment.” And resuming his narrative: “Twenty times between Bazeilles and Balan I just missed being killed. It was a storm, a regular hurricane, of shot and shell! And I saw the Emperor, too. Oh! but he is a brave man!—And after leaving Balan I ran—”

Henriette shook him by the arm.

“My husband?”

“Weiss? why, he stayed behind there, Weiss did.”

“What do you mean, behind there?”

“Why, yes; he picked up the musket of a dead soldier, and is fighting away with the best of them.”

“He is fighting, you say?—and why?”

“He must be out of his head, I think. He would not come with me, and of course I had to leave him.”

Henriette gazed at him fixedly, with wide-dilated eyes. For a moment no one spoke; then in a calm voice she declared her resolution.

“It is well; I will go to him.”