Why we lingered in Paris I never knew, or have forgotten. It is very probable, there were difficulties in the way to the frontier, which good Father Bonneville feared to encounter—or, perhaps, he was sensible of the approach of severe illness, and feared to undertake the journey in such a state of health. The fatigues of our flight had been too much for the old man, and although he never appeared upon the way half as tired as I was, yet, after our labors were over, while I rallied and became as brisk and active as ever in four-and-twenty hours, he remained languid and feeble, and unwilling to stir out of his room. He would not confine me, however, to the hotel, but suffered me to visit various parts of Paris, where objects worthy of attention were to be seen. I thus acquired a tolerable knowledge of the principal leading thoroughfares of the town, and could find my way from one part of the city to another, with perfect ease.

For some time, I shut my eyes to the fact that my old friend and protector was really ill; but when we had been in Paris about a fortnight, the change which had taken place in his appearance, his pale and haggard face, and the thinness of his always delicate and beautiful hands, awoke me to a sense of his real state.

“I fear you are not well, my Father,” I said, as I sat by his side, while he leaned back in his great chair, with his feet to the fire.

Father Bonneville shook his head mournfully, and I urged him to let me go for a physician.

“I believe you must, Louis,” he answered; “for I do feel very ill, and I would fain recover strength enough at all events, to place you, my son, in safety before I die.”

“There is a physician lives close by,” I said, “I can run for him in a minute.”

“No, no,” cried the good priest, “that will not do. There was a physician here in Paris, whom I knew in days of old—a good and a sincere man, who would not betray us, but on the contrary, would give us aid and advice in other matters, besides those of mere health. Do you know the Place Du Petit Chatelet, Louis?”

I replied, that I knew it well, and Father Bonneville wrote down the name of a physician, and the number of his house, saying in the desponding tone of sickness—

“Very likely he may be dead, and then I know not what we shall do.”

Without any loss of time, I sallied out into the streets of Paris, in search of Dr. L——. It was a fine, clear, cold afternoon, with the snow lying piled up at the sides of the streets, the fountains all frozen, and the chains of the street-lamps covered with glittering frost. The wind was keen and cutting, and few people, especially of the lower orders, were in the street; for though sans culottism may be a very good thing, it is by no means warm, and the worthy rulers of the destinies of France at that moment, had not great-coats enough amongst them to render them indifferent to a north-east wind. I could thus pursue my way rapidly, uninterrupted by the crowds which usually thronged the streets of the French capital, and though doubtless I did not take all the shortest ways, I soon reached the place I was seeking. The houses were tall, dirty, well-smoked, and ever open doors round the whole place, gave entrance to innumerable stair-cases which led up to the dwellings of low advocates, notaries public, physicians, artists, poor men of letters, and all that class who scrape a precarious existence from the faults, the follies, the misfortunes, the miseries of others. But now I had a very puzzling calculation to make. Father Bonneville had written down, after the name of Dr. L——, number five, Place du Petit Chatelet, but not a house was to be seen which had a number on it, and I was obliged to guess at which corner the numeration commenced. I was evidently wrong in my first essay, for no Doctor L—— could I find in the house which I fixed upon; and short and snappish were the answers I got at the various doors where I applied.

That could not be number five, and so I turned to the other side of the square, and began in the opposite direction. As I was counting the houses from the corner, I saw a little girl coming from a street nearly in face of me, with a basket in her hand, and poorly dressed. She turned suddenly into one of the door-ways, and I sprang after her, running as fast as possible and nearly overturning an old woman, who was roasting chestnuts in a tin kettle—for which I had my benediction. Little cared I, however; for my heart beat wildly, and the only thing I feared at that moment, was, that I should lose sight of that little girl with the basket; for I had taken it into my head at once that she was Mariette de Salins. She had gone up the stairs, however, when I reached the door, and without pausing for an instant I ran up after her, just in time to see her enter an apartment on the second floor, the door of which was closing as I approached. I knocked sharply, without a moment’s consideration, when an elderly man, with thin and powdered white hair, and a pleasant, though grave expression of countenance, presented himself, asking who I wanted.

A moment’s consideration had shown me that it might be dangerous to mention the name of Mariette; nor must it be supposed that such discretion was at all marvelous in a boy of my age at that time; for those were days of constant peril, when every act was to be thought of, every word weighed, and the habit of caution and reserve was inculcated as a duty upon even mere children. On the spur of the occasion, then, I replied that I was seeking Dr. L——, still keeping my eyes fixed upon a door which stood ajar heading into a room beyond.

“My name is Doctor L——,” replied the old man. “What is it you want with me, my son? And why are you looking so earnestly in there?”

“I want you to come and see a gentleman who is sick,” I replied, “in the Hotel de Clermont, close by the Quinze-vingts.”

“Is he very ill?” asked the doctor. “What is his name?”

But before I could answer either of his questions the inner door I have mentioned was drawn back, the beautiful little face peeped out, and in a moment after Mariette was in my arms.

“I thought it was you, dear Mariette,” I cried, kissing her tenderly, while she seemed never tired of hugging me. “Where is your mother? How is she?”

“Hush, hush!” said the old doctor, closing the outer door; “no questions or answers of any kind here, except medical ones. Mariette knows well that she must be silent, and answer no inquiries—and so,” he continued, after having thus stopped all explanations between us, “I suppose I am to conclude, my son, that this story of the sick man is a fiction, and that your object was to catch your little playfellow here.”

“No indeed,” I replied, with some indignation, “I have not been taught to speak falsehoods, sir. The gentleman I mentioned, does wish to see you, and is very ill. His name you will know when you see him; for you have met before—not that I mean to say I did not want to see Mariette, and indeed you must let her tell me where I can find her; for it is a long, long time since I have seen her.”

“That cannot be,” said the doctor, gravely; “she must learn to keep counsel—are you of the same town, then?”

“Oh, she lived with me for a long time,” I replied; “and the gentleman whom I want you to come and see is the same who was so kind to her there.”

“I should like to see him very much,” said Mariette, looking down.

“Well, well, I will go to him,” said the doctor, gravely, “and if it be proper that you two children should meet again, I will bring it about. Now you, Mariette, go in and empty your basket as usual. You, my son, go back to your friend, and say I will be with him in an hour.”

Thus saying, he led me gently by the arm to the door and put me out, and I hastened back with all my intelligence to Father Bonneville, asking him if it were not strange that I should find Mariette just at the house of Doctor L——.

“Perhaps not,” replied the good priest, with a faint smile. “The doctor is a native of our own province, and known to many of the good and the wise there.”

He said no more upon the subject, and made no inquiries, but remained somewhat listlessly in his chair gazing into the fire, till at length came a gentle knock at the door, and the physician entered, dressed with somewhat more care than he had been an hour before, with a three-cornered hat on his head, and a gold-headed cane in his hand. He approached Father Bonneville with an unconscious air, and without the slightest sign of recognition, till the old priest held out his hand to him, saying—“Ah, my friend, do you not remember me? You have not changed so much as I have, it would seem.”

Doctor L—— started back; for the sweet, silvery tones of the voice seemed to wake up memory, and he exclaimed—“Is it possible? my good friend, Bonneville!—Nay, nay. You are too much changed for time to have done it all. You must be really ill. Leave us, my young friend, I doubt not we shall soon set all this to rights.”

I retreated into my little room where it was cold enough, for there was no fire-place, and waited there shivering very tolerably for nearly an hour, while Dr. L—— and the good priest remained in consultation. At the end of that time Dr. L—— came and called me back, and when I re-entered Father Bonneville’s room, held me by the arm at a little distance from him, gazing very earnestly in my face, and seeming to scrutinize every line.

“Yes,” he said at length, turning to my old friend; “yes, he is very like him—Poor boy, what a fate!—Well, my young friend,” he said, suddenly changing the subject. “We must get good Citizen Charlier here, to his bed as soon as possible. He will be well soon, and would have been well by this time if he had sent for me before. But we must try and make up for lost time. I will not send him to the apothecary’s,” he said, “for drugs, for we are never sure of them at those places—one man acknowledged the other day that during twenty years he had never sold one genuine ounce of rhubarb. I have two other visits to pay; but let him come to my house in an hour and a half, and I will send what will do you good. Perhaps I may see you again to-night.”

“Shall I find Mariette with you?” I asked, looking up in the doctor’s face.

The good man shook his head, and then turning to Father Bonneville, said with a smile—“I think these two children are in love with each other; but little Mariette is so discreet that she would not even tell me who he was or who you were. She has had bitter lessons of caution for one so young—perhaps you may sometimes see her at my house, my son; but you must imitate her discretion, and neither ask any questions, nor answer them if put to you by strangers.”

“Oh, Louis is growing very discreet,” said Father Bonneville; “for we have had warnings enough since we have been in this house to prevent us from taking the bridle off our tongues for a moment—fare you well, my good friend, I shall be glad to see you again to-night if you can contrive to come; but yet I do not think it is needful for my health that you should take such trouble.”

“We will see, we will see,” replied the doctor, and shaking him by the hand he left the room.

The good Father, then, with my assistance, undressed and went to bed, where, to say sooth, he would have been much better three or four days before; and at the appointed hour I went for the medicines which had been promised, but saw no one except an old female servant, who gave me two bottles addressed to Citizen Charlier.

As I returned, I met a furious mob coming up the streets with a bloody head upon a pike, and perhaps I was in some peril, though I was not aware of it at the time. My dress, though very plain, was neat and whole, and I was seized as I attempted to pass through the mob, by a gaunt, fierce-looking man, with hardly one untattered piece of clothing on his back. He called me a cursed little aristocrat, and made the man who bore the head upon the pike, lower the bloody witness of their inhuman deeds to make me kiss it. They brought it to the level of my head, and thrust its dark, contorted features into my face. But I stoutly refused to kiss it, saying I was not an aristocrat; and why should I kiss a head that they told me had belonged to one.

“If you can make me out an aristocrat,” I exclaimed, “I will kiss it.”

“What have you got here in your hand?” cried the sans-culotte, snatching the bottles from me.

“Only medicines for a sick man,” I replied.

He tore off the paper, however, opened one of the bottles and put it to his mouth, then spat upon the ground with a blasphemous oath, exclaiming—“He is only a garÇon apothecaire. Let him pass, let him pass! He will kill as many sacre aristocrats with his cursed drugs as we can with the guillotine. Let the imp pass. His is a trade that should be encouraged.”

Thus saying, he marched on, and his fierce and malignant companions followed. I cannot say that I was in reality at all frightened. Every thing had passed so quickly that I had not had time to become alarmed; but I felt bewildered, and paused for a moment to gather my senses together after the mob had passed into the Place du Petit Chatelet which was close at hand. I was still standing there when I heard a voice saying, “Louis, Louis.”

I looked round, but could see nobody, and the only place from which the sound could proceed, appeared to be one of those open doors so common in Paris at the time, with a dark passage beyond it.

“Louis, Louis,” said the voice again; “come in here, I want to speak to you.”

It was not the tongue of Mariette certainly; for her sweet, child-like tones I should have known any where; and I hesitated whether I should go in or not. I resolved not to seem cowardly, however, and walked into the passage. I could then see faintly, a tall, and as it appeared to me, graceful figure move on before me, and I followed into a little room quite at the back of the house, to which the light was admitted from a little court behind. There the figure turned as I entered, and I beheld Madame de Salins.

The room itself presented a painful picture of poverty. It could not have been above ten feet square, and in one corner, without curtains, or any shelter from the wind, was the bed of Madame de Salins herself, and close by it a little bed for her daughter. The latter, indeed, was fenced round with a shawl hung upon two chairs, which only left one in the room vacant. A table, a broken looking-glass, a few cups and glasses, with a coffee-pot standing by the fire, seemed to form all the other furniture of the chamber. I had very little time to look round me; for Madame de Salins at once began to inquire after the health of Father Bonneville.

“I saw you from a front window,” she said, as soon as I had answered her first questions, “and feared that those men would maltreat you; for they have the hearts of tigers, and spare no one.”

A sudden fear seized me, lest Mariette should be even then coming from the house of good Doctor L——, and encounter the ruffians whom I had just escaped.

“Is Mariette at the Place du Chatelet?” I asked, eagerly. “Let me go and see that no harm happens to her.”

“No, no,” replied Madame de Salins. “She is here with the old lady in the front room, who lets us sometimes sit with her, as a relief from this dark, dismal hole. You are a good, brave boy, however, Louis, and for every kind and generous act you do, depend upon it you will have your reward. Mariette, thank God, is quite safe, and she has learnt whenever she sees a crowd to avoid it. But tell me more about Father Bonneville. Does Doctor L—— think he is in danger?”

I was not able to give her any satisfactory answer, for I really did not know what was the physician’s opinion of my good preceptor’s case.

“Tell him,” said Madame de Salins, “that I will come to see him if I can do so secretly; but I am under surveillance, and all my movements, I fear, will be watched till some new change takes place in this ever-shifting government. I have several things to say to him, and could wish to see him much.”

She spoke in an anxious and thoughtful tone, and doubtless had many matters of deep and painful importance pressing upon her mind at the moment. Boy-like, however, my attention was directed principally to the more obvious inconveniencies which she suffered, and I said, “I am afraid you must be very badly off here, madame.”

The lady smiled. “Badly enough, my dear boy,” she replied. “But yet we might be very much worse—nay, we have been much worse in mind, if not in body. But I will not keep you now. Tell Monsieur de Bonneville what I have said, and add that if he has any thing to reply, he can communicate it to me through Doctor L——.”

When I reached the inn, my first task was to give good Father Bonneville the medicine prescribed for him, and then to tell him of my interview with Madame de Salins. He seemed greatly interested, and repeated once or twice, “Poor thing! poor thing! I hope she will be successful; but I can’t help her—I can do nothing to help her. I know too little to give her advice, and have no power to give her assistance.”

I did not press the subject upon him, nor make any inquiries, but sat for a long time by his bed-side reading to him both in Latin and in French. English was by this time quite forbidden between us, and we had no English books.

In the evening, toward nine o’clock, Doctor L—— came again, and felt his patient’s pulse with a cheerful air.

“The good woman of the house,” he said, “waylaid me on the stairs, to ask if you were likely to die, my good friend, and to suggest that in that case it would be as well to send you to the hospital. I have spared you that journey, however, by assuring her that in a week or ten days you will be well enough to go to the opera, if by that time they have left any singers with their heads on. They guillotined poor Benoit this morning. I ventured to suggest that they would not get such another tenor in a hurry; and so they made him sing before they put him into the cart, to try, I suppose, how they liked it. Whether he sang too well or too ill to please them, I don’t know, but they drove him off to the guillotine, while I was seeing another prisoner.”

Father Bonneville gave a shudder; but sickness is always more or less selfish, and though naturally one of the most unselfish men in the world, his thoughts speedily reverted to himself. “I trust,” he said, “that there will be no necessity for sending me to the hospital. Did you quite satisfy the good woman?”

“Quite,” replied Doctor L——. “I told her that I would be answerable for your not giving occasion to a funeral from her house, which is what all these good aubergiste fear. I told her, moreover, that when your daughter and your granddaughter arrived from the country, you would very speedily rally.”

“My daughter,” said Father Bonneville, with a faint smile. “I have no daughter but spiritual daughters, my friend.”

“Perhaps we may find you one for the occasion,” said Doctor L——, laughing. “But I will tell you more about it to-morrow; for although you must be, of course, consulted whether you will have a child or not, yet in this case, out of the ordinary course of nature, the child must first be asked whether she likes to be born. In short, I have a scheme in my head, my good friend; but it requires maturing, and the pivot upon which it all turns is your rapid recovery. So take care of yourself; cast care from your mind for the present, and you will speedily be both well and strong again.”

Thus saying, he left him, and for two or three days no event of any importance occurred, except the gradual improvement of Father Bonneville, under the kind and zealous treatment of the good physician.

——