“I saw his carriage at the foot of the cliff,” said Peltran; “he stayed full fifteen minutes up at the Fortress. Père Caboff conducted him down to his carriage, and Marcel stood watching them till it was out of sight.”
“It must have consoled them mightily to have M. le Marquis come in and sit talking to them in that neighborly fashion,” remarked lame Pierre, a hero who had lost a leg and an eye at Aboukir; “that, and poor Hugues being killed by a cannon-ball under the emperor’s own eye, ought to cheer up the Caboffs wonderfully.”
“Ay, ay,” said Peltran; “God tempers the wind to the shorn lamb.”
“M. le Marquis looked as down-hearted as if he had lost a child of his own,” observed Pierre; “may be he was thinking whose turn it might be next.”
“There goes Mère Virginie with the little one!” said Peltran; and all present turned their heads towards the window and looked out with an expression of interest, as if the objects in view were a rare and pleasant sight. And yet it was one that met them in their daily walks by the roadside and on the cliff—the little old lady in her nun-like dress, with her keen gray eyes and sweet smile, and the dark-eyed, elfin-looking child whose name was Alba. Alba was always singing.
“Is not your little throat tired, my child?” said Virginie, as the blithe voice kept on soaring and trilling by her side.
“I am never tired singing, petite mère! Do the angels tire of it sometimes, I wonder?”
“Nay, the angels cannot tire; they are perfectly happy.”
“And I, petite mère—am I not perfectly happy?”
“Is there nothing you long for, nothing you would be the happier for having?”