"Marcel!"
"Polycarpe!"
The two friends threw themselves into each other's arms, unable to utter another word.
"How well and happy you look!" exclaimed Polycarpe at last, laying his hand caressingly on his friend's shoulder and gazing affectionately at him.
"And you, Polycarpe, what a tremendous fellow you are with your turban and your great beard!" returned Marcel, looking with admiration at the supple, sinewy form of the handsome Zouave, on whose broad chest shone the Cross of the Legion of Honor.
The blushing young wife received her husband's old friend with a cordiality that soon put the soldier quite at his ease, and by the time the dinner was ended they were chatting together as if they were acquaintances of ten years' standing.
"Now, Marcel," said Polycarpe, when the happy trio were quietly seated in the little salon through whose open windows the fresh roses peeped in, perfuming the soft evening air—"now, Marcel, you must tell me something more about yourself than the few letters I have received from you have contained."
"First, let me tell you something, Monsieur Polycarpe," cried Gabrielle. "Let me tell you that I shall be grateful to you, and love you as a brother to my dying day, for having saved Marcel from being a soldier."
"Madam," replied the Zouave, laughing, "you must love me as your brother, but you owe me no gratitude. Why, I had always wished to be a soldier, and it was the most natural thing in the world that I should exchange my good number for Marcel's bad one. But that drawing for the conscription is really a dreadful ordeal!"
"Thank God that you have come back to us!" ejaculated Marcel softly.