At sight of those charming faces, which their poor mourning vestments only rendered more interesting, the burgomaster rose from his seat, struck with surprise and admiration.  By a spontaneous movement, each sister took a hand of Dagobert, and pressed close to him, whilst they regarded the magistrate with looks of mingled anxiety and candor.

It was so touching a picture, this of the old soldier presenting as it were to his judge the graceful children, with countenances full of innocence and beauty, that the burgomaster, by a sudden reaction, found himself once more disposed to sentiments of pity.  Dagobert perceived it; and, still holding the orphans by the hand, he advanced towards him, and said in a feeling voice:  “Look at these poor children, Mr. Burgomaster!  Could I show you a better passport?” And, overcome by so many painful sensations—­restrained, yet following each other in quick succession—­Dagobert felt, in spite of himself, that the tears were starting to his eyes.

Though naturally rough, and rendered still more testy by the interruption of his sleep, the burgomaster was not quite deficient in sense of feeling.  He perceived at once, that a man thus accompanied, ought not to inspire any great distrust.  “Poor dear children!” said he, as he examined them with growing interest; “orphans so young, and they come from far—­”

“From the heart of Siberia, Mr. Burgomaster, where their mother was an exile before their birth.  It is now more than five months that we have been travelling on by short stages—­hard enough, you will say, for children of their age.  It is for them that I ask your favor and support for them against whom everything seems to combine to-day for, only just now, when I went to look for my papers, I could not find in my knapsack the portfolio in which they were, along with my purse and cross—­for you must know, Mr. Burgomaster—­pardon me, if I say it—­’tis not from vain glory—­but I was decorated by the hand of the Emperor; and a man whom he decorated with his own hand, you see, could not be so bad a fellow, though he may have had the misfortune to lose his papers—­and his purse.  That’s what has happened to me, and made me so pressing about the damages.”

“How and where did you suffer this loss?”

“I do not know, Mr. Burgomaster; I am sure that the evening before last, at bed-time, I took a little money out of the purse, and saw the portfolio in its place; yesterday I had small change sufficient, and did not undo the knapsack.”

“And where then has the knapsack been kept?”

“In the room occupied by the children:  but this night—­”

Dagobert was here interrupted by the tread of some one mounting the stairs:  it was the Prophet.  Concealed in the shadow of the staircase, he had listened to this conversation, and he dreaded lest the weakness of the burgomaster should mar the complete success of his projects.

CHAPTER XIV.