The orphans, too, daughters of a soldier and a brave woman, did not shrink from the rough energy of these words, but felt their cheeks glow, and their hearts beat tumultuously.

“How happy we are to be the children of so brave a father!” cried Blanche.

“It is a happiness and an honor too, my children—­for the evening of the battle of Montmirail, the Emperor, to the joy of the whole army, made your father Duke of Ligny and Marshal of France.”

“Marshal of France!” said Rose in astonishment, without understanding the exact meaning of the words.

“Duke of Ligny!” added Blanche with equal surprise.

“Yes; Peter Simon, the son of a workman, became duke and marshal—­there is nothing higher except a king!” resumed Dagobert, proudly.  “That’s how the Emperor treated the sons of the people, and, therefore, the people were devoted to him.  It was all very fine to tell them ’Your Emperor makes you food for cannon.’  ‘Stuff!’ replied the people, who are no fools, ’another would make us food for misery.  We prefer the cannon, with the chance of becoming captain or colonel, marshal, king—­or invalid; that’s better than to perish with hunger, cold, and age, on straw in a garret, after toiling forty years for others.’”

“Even in France—­even in Paris, that beautiful city—­do you mean to say there are poor people who die of hunger and misery, Dagobert?”

“Even in Paris?  Yes, my children; therefore, I come back to the point, the cannon is better.  With it, one has the chance of becoming, like your father, duke and marshal:  when I say duke and marshal, I am partly right and partly wrong, for the title and the rank were not recognized in the end; because, after Montmirail, came a day of gloom, a day of great mourning, when, as the general has told me, old soldiers like myself wept—­yes, wept!—­on the evening of a battle.  That day, my children, was Waterloo!”

There was in these simple words of Dagobert an expression of such deep sorrow, that it thrilled the hearts of the orphans.

“Alas!” resumed the soldier, with a sigh, “there are days which seem to have a curse on them.  That same day, at Waterloo, the general fell, covered with wounds, at the head of a division of the Guards.  When he was nearly cured, which was not for a long time, he solicited permission to go to St. Helena—­another island at the far end of the world, to which the English had carried the Emperor, to torture him at their leisure; for if he was very fortunate in the first instance, he had to go through a deal of hard rubs at last, my poor children.”

“If you talk in that way, you will make us cry, Dagobert.”