“Talk of danger! talk of the porter’s gun and the gardener’s scythe!” said Dagobert, shrugging his shoulders contemptuously.  “Talk of them, and have done with it for, after all, suppose I were to leave my carcass in the convent, would not you remain to your mother?  For twenty years, you were accustomed to do without me.  It will be all the less trying to you.”

“And I, alas! am the cause of these misfortunes!” cried the poor mother.  “Ah!  Gabriel had good reason to blame me.”

“Mme. Frances, be comforted,” whispered the sempstress, who had drawn near to Dagobert’s wife.  “Agricola will not suffer his father to expose himself thus.”

After a moment’s hesitation, the smith resumed, in an agitated voice:  “I know you too well, father, to think of stopping you by the fear of death.”

“Of what danger, then, do you speak?”

“Of a danger from which even you will shrink, brave as you are,” said the young man, in a voice of emotion, that forcibly struck his father.

“Agricola,” said the soldier, roughly and severely, “that remark is cowardly, you are insulting.”

“Father—­”

“Cowardly!” resumed the soldier, angrily; “because it is cowardice to wish to frighten a man from his duty—­insulting! because you think me capable of being so frightened.”

“Oh, M. Dagobert!” exclaimed the sewing-girl, “you do not understand Agricola.”

“I understand him too well,” answered the soldier harshly.

Painfully affected by the severity of his father, but firm in his resolution, which sprang from love and respect, Agricola resumed, whilst his heart beat violently.  “Forgive me, if I disobey you, father; but, were you to hate me for it, I must tell you to what you expose yourself by scaling at night the walls of a convent—­”

“My son! do you dare?” cried Dagobert, his countenance inflamed with rage-"Agricola!” exclaimed Frances, in tears.  “My husband!”

“M.  Dagobert, listen to Agricola!” exclaimed Mother Bunch.  “It is only in your interest that he speaks.”

“Not one word more!” replied the soldier, stamping his foot with anger.

“I tell you, father,” exclaimed the smith, growing fearfully pale as he spoke, “that you risk being sent to the galleys!”

“Unhappy boy!” cried Dagobert, seizing his son by the arm; “could you not keep that from me—­rather than expose me to become a traitor and a coward?” And the soldier shuddered, as he repeated:  “The galleys!”—­and, bending down his head, remained mute, pensive, withered, as it were, by those blasting words.

“Yes, to enter an inhabited place by night, in such a manner, is what the law calls burglary, and punishes with the galleys,” cried Agricola, at once grieved and rejoicing at his father’s depression of mind—­“yes, father, the galleys, if you are taken in the act; and there are ten chances to one that you would be so.  Mother Bunch has told you, the convent is guarded.