Taking the Bastile

d Paris was covered with snow, although the

the white fields out of the town of Villers Cotterets, in the woods, eighteen leagues from the capital, which he had reached b

The sharp air, the odor of the oaks, the icicles and beads on t

nd the blue smoke of the chimneys, filtering from th

w cress and frozen vines, and at the first hovel asked f

and staring at the stranger, led him by the hand to a rather large and good-

erved as

the guides nodding

which he pushed open, while the children, taking one another's hand, started with all their might at the h

name, simply so for he had no other, saw no living th

by a scene full of charm, for almost anybody, and p

while another child, a sturdy boy of four

stuck a pane of glass, another woman, going on for thirty-five or six, was sp

show that he had not been caught napping. The praying boy turned, cutting the devoti

ther Madeline," said

my name," she cri

terrupt me. Instead of one babe at t

ade crib he laid his

arling!" ejacul

s, Aunt Angelique

visitor, pointing to the spi

man's s

e," mumbled the boy, striking in

his mother: "you are int

mers, the farmer being ruined. My master, his godfather, wants him brought up in the count

mast

Besides, this is the nursling which Master Niquet, t

it with the nourishment it craved with a gener

hild to you. I see that he will fare well here, and I trust he will bring into this cabin a dr

ut he is rich, and he adds a f

, "this child will bring you twenty livres

ank you kindly, mast

, placing ten fine gold coins on the table, which made the two women o

g should not live?" que

as seldom happens," responded the gentleman;

yes,

ass to the fu

re to keep

it," said Gilbert, in a sti

r, is he a

feeling and questions: but h

e poor father died on the shock of hearing that hi

g their hands

no love from his parents," contin

cters, overflowing with health and good will, such as Greuze paints in his natural domestic pictures. A few wo

would be paid until the boy was a man an

er think we shall take to the ki

men together, "he thinks it

uet's where I will leave the money required s

er the cradle in which the new-comer had ou

ou have the aspect of your proud mother, the a

the babe's fresh cheek and tottered out. He gave half a louis to little Ange, who was stumbling between his legs, and shook hands with the women who thoug

e said to Pitou, w

from the threshold: "his name-

replied the young

en years education and training was to be given him, and the balance was to be devoted to fitting him in a trade or buying a plot of land. At hi

was to have the int

years before she had seen Gilbert, returned a man of twenty-seven, stiff, dogmatic of speech, cold at the outset. But his mask of ice

me if eve

and the praise of the Abbe Fortier's school for youth, he left Gilbert at that institution. He had thought highly of the tutor's philosophical mien; f

other knew the

need. It was a bright light. No doubt Providence had brought him to Haram

st, who wrote a letter for her, and this was gi

, for she d