The entrance of the Commissioner of Marine put an end to the conversation between the General and the merchant. The latter obtained without difficulty, thanks to the intervention of his "protector," permission to take with him his iron ring, his manille as the thing is called in the galleys.

That same evening Marik Lebrenn proceeded to Paris.

CHAPTER XIII.
HOME AGAIN.

On the 10th of September, 1849, two days after General Plouernel brought to Marik Lebrenn his pardon and complete restitution to civic and political rights, the merchant's family was gathered in a modest apartment on the second floor of their house.

The shop had been closed two hours before. A lamp, placed upon a large round center table, lighted the several personages who sat around it.

Madam Lebrenn was busy with the mercantile books of the establishment; her daughter, dressed in mourning, gently rocked on her knees a babe asleep; while George, also in mourning, like his wife, on account of the death of his grandfather Morin a few months previous, sketched on a sheet of paper the draft of a wainscot. Immediately upon his marriage, and agreeable to the wishes of Lebrenn, George had established upon the profit-sharing principle a large joiner's shop on the ground floor of a house contiguous to that of his father-in-law.

Sacrovir Lebrenn was reading a treatise on the mechanics of cloth weaving, and from time to time inserted some notes in the margin of his book.

Jeanike was busy ironing some napkins, while Gildas, who sat before a little table with a heap of articles of linen belonging to the shop, was labeling and folding them in shape for exhibition in the show window.

Madam Lebrenn's face was pensive and sad. So also would surely have been the expression on the face of her daughter, then in the full bloom of her beauty, had she not at that moment exchanged a sweet smile with her babe, which stretched out its arms to her.

His mind drawn for a moment from his work by the gurgling laughter of the child, George turned his eyes to, and completed the group with inexpressible joy.