Page:Famous stories from foreign countries.djvu/24

 that thought the winds of freedom began to riot in his heart! Now he knew that he was in love with her. Now she was a widow! Now she was poorer than a cow-girl of Appenzell; now he could marry her.

This logic surprised him as much as a mole hill in a meadow where the bees hum. His brother, who had once belonged to the regiment of the Prince of Orleans, did duty as watchman in the Temple.

“Du Quinteli! is there with you imprisoned a young woman who wears a flowered silk, and three ostrich feathers in her hair?”

“No,” replied Lieutenant Quintus, who had once been drummer boy. “I haven’t seen any one like that! But perhaps she has taken off the flowered silk. What’s her name?”

Primus told her name and Quintus began to ponder.

“I know her very well—a tidy little woman who said to me one day: “The Americans do not understand anything of our fine life,” and as I was about to tickle her under the chin, thinking I knew something about it, she said: “A man has eyes and a dog has a nose, and that I was not as good as a dog. From America nothing good can come.”

Just then a noble gentleman, Vicque d’Azur was brought into the Temple. He had let the soldiers drag him along just any way, but now he heard the two brothers talking and declared:

“That is true—and it goes still deeper. One can despise this French Revolution, but one can not help but be afraid of that cold, American, little-shop-keeper way of thinking. A mind capable of forecasting facts