discredit to your uniform.'

"He raised his fist, Captain, saying that fatigue duty like that was
worth double. Of course, everybody has his own ideas, and he ought not to
have accepted it. You know the rest."

"Captain d'Anglemare laughed until he cried as he told me the story, but
he also made me promise to keep the matter a secret, just as he had
promised the two soldiers. So, above all, do not betray me, but promise
me to keep it to yourself."

"Oh! You may be quite easy about that. But how was it all arranged, in
the end?"

"How? It is a joke in a thousand!... Mother Bonderoi keeps her two
dragoons, and reserves his own particular day for each of them, and in
that way everybody is satisfied."

"Oh! That is capital! Really capital!"

"And he can send his old father and mother the money as usual, and thus
morality is satisfied."




THE RELIC


_To the Abbé Louis d'Ennemare, at Soissons._