Ah, how often had they seen it in their dreams, that dreadful mahogany
cylinder turning lazily upon its pivot and rolling in its womb, along
with that of a hundred others, the fate of all that was dear to them
on earth! How often, too, had their poor brains, racked and fired by
doubt, fear and anguish, followed their child as he stood beside it,
and grown dizzy as they watched him plunge his hand through its lid
and tear open the little white slip which might be his sentence of
slavery, his order of exile, or--O God! who knows?--his
death-warrant!
One night the father and mother had started up in their sleep
together: they had dreamt that all was over: giddy with terror, they
had rushed into Henri's room. Thank Heaven! he was still there, and
asleep: they knelt by his bed and wept.
"Mother," he said on awaking, "I've been dreaming that they had taken
me."
Another night Madeleine saw herself in a field somewhere. All around
and before her were soldiers; by them stood lines of cannon; here and
there were horses, and by the light of a few bivouac-fires she
perceived some bleeding heaps of dead.
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