The orphans just chanced to be at the foot of a little mound, the summit of which was buried in the thick foliage of a huge oak, planted half way down the slope.  Perceiving that Dagobert continued motionless and absorbed in thought, Rose leaned over her saddle, and, placing her little white hand on the shoulder of their guide, whose back was turned towards her, said to him, in a soft voice, “Whatever is the matter with you, Dagobert?”

The veteran turned; to the great astonishment of the sisters, they perceived a large tear, which traced its humid furrow down his tanned cheek, and lost itself in his thick moustache.

“You weeping—­you!” cried Rose and Blanche together, deeply moved.  “Tell us, we beseech, what is the matter?”

After a moments hesitation, the soldier brushed his horny hand across his eyes, and said to the orphans in a faltering voice, whilst he pointed to the old oak beside them:  “I shall make you sad, my poor children:  and yet what I’m going to tell you has something sacred in it.  Well, eighteen years ago, on the eve of the great battle of Leipsic, I carried your father to this very tree.  He had two sabre-cuts on the head, a musket ball in his shoulder; and it was here that he and I—­who had got two thrust of a lance for my share—­were taken prisoners; and by whom, worse luck?—­why, a renegado!  By a Frenchman—­an emigrant marquis, then colonel in the service of Russia—­and who afterwards—­but one day you shall know all.”

The veteran paused; then, pointing with his staff to the village of Mockern, he added:  “Yes, yes, I can recognize the spot.  Yonder are the heights where your brave father—­who commanded us, and the Poles of the Guard—­overthrew the Russian Cuirassiers, after having carried the battery.  Ah, my children!” continued the soldier, with the utmost simplicity, “I wish you had, seen your brave father, at the head of our brigade of horse, rushing on in a desperate charge in the thick of a shower of shells!—­There was nothing like it—­not a soul so grand as he!”

Whilst Dagobert thus expressed, in his own way, his regrets and recollections, the two orphans—­by a spontaneous movement, glided gently from the horse, and holding each other by the hand, went together to kneel at the foot of the old oak.  And there, closely pressed in each other’s arms, they began to weep; whilst the soldier, standing behind them, with his hands crossed on his long staff, rested his bald front upon it.

“Come, come you must not fret,” said he softly, when, after a pause of a few minutes, he saw tears run down the blooming cheeks of Rose and Blanche, still on their knees.  “Perhaps we may find General Simon in Paris,” added he; “I will explain all that to you this evening at the inn.  I purposely waited for this day, to tell you many things about your father; it was an idea of mine, because this day is a sort of anniversary.”

“We weep because we think also of our mother,” said Rose.