"My noble and good father!" the Count exclaimed, pressing his foster brother's hand.
"Yes! yes, noble and good! he secured my mother a little annuity which enables her to live, and took me into his own regiment. Two years ago, during the last expedition against the Rey of Constantine, your father was struck by a bullet in his chest, and died at the end of two hours, calling upon his son."
"Yes," the young man said, with tears in his eyes, "I know he did."
"But what you do not know, Louis, is, that at the point of death your father turned towards me—for, from the moment he had received his wound I had never left him."
Louis again silently pressed the hand of Valentine, whilst the latter continued—
"'Valentine,' he said to me, in a faint voice, broken by the rattle of death, for the mortal agony had commenced, 'my son is left alone, and without experience; he has nobody but you, his foster brother. Watch over him—never abandon him! May I depend upon your promise? it will mitigate the pain of dying.' I knelt down beside him, and respectfully seizing the hand he held out to me, exclaimed—'Die in peace! in the hour of adversity I will be always by the side of your Louis. Two tears of joy at that awful hour dropped from your father's eyes; he said, in a faltering voice—'God has heard your oath and murmuring your name, and clasping my hand, he expired. Louis, I owe to your father the comfort my mother enjoys; I owe to your father the feelings that make me a man, and this cross which glitters on my breast. Can you not now comprehend, then, why I have spoken to you as I have done? While you held your course in your strength, I kept aloof; but now that the hour has arrived for accomplishing my vow, no human power can prevent me from doing so."
The two young men were silent for a moment, and then Louis, laying his face on the soldier's honest chest, said, with a burst of tears—
"When shall we set out, brother?"
The latter looked at him earnestly—
"You are fully resolved to commence a new life?"