Of a sudden she stumbled: a
corpse was barring her way. She stooped over it: it was her boy!
Once again she fancied herself seated by her cottage door: the sun was
setting, and down the small road which led to the house galloped an
orderly, a dragoon, covered with dust. "Are you Madeleine Derblay?" he
asked.--"Yes."--He drew from his sack a letter sealed with black.
"Madame," he said, "your son has died for his country, but he has
gained this on the field of battle;" and he handed her the cross of
the Legion of Honor. "Give me back my child!" she had shrieked: "take
away your reward! Give me back my child! I won't sell him for that
cross."
And Henri the while? His heart was as heavy as that of his parents,
for he well knew that the day which doomed him to a seven years'
absence would also condemn him to orphanhood. His father and mother
were too aged by sorrow to be able to abide his return: they would
soon die; and if not, who would be there to tend them, to earn them
bread, to find them the comforts which their old arms were unfit to
earn by themselves? These reflections were terrible; and besides, to
make his pain more torturing, he was in love.
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