After a moments hesitation, the soldier brushed his horny hand across his
eyes, and said to the orphans in a faltering voice, whilst he pointed to
the old oak beside them: "I shall make you sad, my poor children: and yet
what I'm going to tell you has something sacred in it. Well, eighteen
years ago, on the eve of the great battle of Leipsic, I carried your
father to this very tree. He had two sabre-cuts on the head, a musket
ball in his shoulder; and it was here that he and I--who had got two
thrust of a lance for my share--were taken prisoners; and by whom, worse
luck?--why, a renegado! By a Frenchman--an emigrant marquis, then colonel
in the service of Russia--and who afterwards--but one day you shall know
all."

The veteran paused; then, pointing with his staff to the village of
Mockern, he added: "Yes, yes, I can recognize the spot. Yonder are the
heights where your brave father--who commanded us, and the Poles of the
Guard--overthrew the Russian Cuirassiers, after having carried the
battery. Ah, my children!" continued the soldier, with the utmost
simplicity, "I wish you had, seen your brave father, at the head of our
brigade of horse, rushing on in a desperate charge in the thick of a
shower of shells!--There was nothing like it--not a soul so grand as he!"

Whilst Dagobert thus expressed, in his own way, his regrets and
recollections, the two orphans--by a spontaneous movement, glided gently
from the horse, and holding each other by the hand, went together to
kneel at the foot of the old oak. And there, closely pressed in each
other's arms, they began to weep; whilst the soldier, standing behind
them, with his hands crossed on his long staff, rested his bald front
upon it.