The Nameless Castle | Page 4

BRIGADE

CHAPTER I

A snow-storm was raging with such vigor that any one who chanced to
be passing along the silent thoroughfare might well have believed
himself in St. Petersburg instead of in Paris, in the Rue des Ours, a side
street leading into the Avenue St. Martin. The street, never a very busy
one, was now almost deserted, as was also the avenue, as it was yet too
early for vehicles of various sorts to be returning from the theatre.
The street-lamps on the corners had not yet been lighted. In front of one
of those old-fashioned houses which belong to a former Paris a heavy
iron lantern swung, creaking in the wind, and, battling with the
darkness, shed flickering rays of light on the child who, with a faded
red cotton shawl wrapped about her, was cowering in the deep doorway
of the house. From time to time there would emerge from the whirling
snowflakes the dark form of a man clad as a laborer. He would walk
leisurely toward the doorway in which the shivering child was
concealed, but would turn when he came to the circle of light cast on
the snowy pavement by the swinging lantern, and retrace his steps, thus
appearing and disappearing at regular intervals. Surely a singular time
and place for a promenade! The clocks struck ten--the hour which
found every honest dweller within the Quartier St. Martin at home. On
this evening, however, two belated citizens came from somewhere,
their hurrying footsteps noiseless in the deep snow, their approach
announced only by the lantern carried by one of them--an article
without which no respectable citizen at the beginning of the century
would have ventured on the street after nightfall. One of the pedestrians
was tall and broad-shouldered, with a handsome countenance, which
bore the impress of an inflexible determination; a dimple indented his
smoothly shaven chin. His companion, and his senior by several years,
was a slender, undersized man.
When the two men came abreast of the doorway illumined by the
swinging lamp, it was evident that they had arrived at their destination.
They halted and prepared to enter the house.
At this moment the child crouching in the snow began to sob.
"See here!" exclaimed the taller of the two gentlemen. "Here is a little
girl."

"Why, so there is!" in turn exclaimed the elder, stooping and letting the
light of his lantern fall on the child's face. "What are you doing here,
little one?" he asked in a kindly tone.
"I want my mama! I want my mama!" wailed the child, with a fresh
burst of sobs.
"Who is your mama?" queried the younger man.
"My mama is the countess."
"And where does she live?"
"In the palace."
"Naturally! In which avenue is the palace?"
"I--don't--know."
"A true child of Paris!" in an undertone exclaimed the elder gentleman.
"She knows that her mother is a countess, and that she lives in a palace;
but she has never been told the name of the street in which is her
home."
"How come you to be here, little countess?" inquired the younger man.
"Diana can tell you," was the reply.
"And who may Diana be?"
"Why, who else but mama's Diana?"
"Allow me to question her," here interposed the elder man. Then, to the
child: "Diana is the person who helps you put on your clothes, is she
not?"
"It is just the other way: she took off my clothes--just see; I have
nothing on but this petticoat and this hideous shawl."

As she spoke she flung back the faded shawl and revealed how scantily
she was clad.
"You poor child!" compassionately ejaculated the young man; and
when he saw that her thin morocco slippers were buried in the snow, he
lifted her hastily in his arms. "You are half frozen."
"But why did Diana leave you half clothed in this manner?" pursued
the elder man. "Why did she undress you? Can't you tell us that much?"
"Mama slapped her this morning."
"Ah! then Diana is a servant?"
"Why, of course; what else could she be?"
"Well, she might be a goddess or a hound, you know," smilingly
returned the old gentleman.
"When mama went to the opera, this evening," explained the little one,
"she ordered Diana to take me to the children's ball at the marquis's.
Instead, she brought me to this street, made me get out of the carriage,
took off my silk ball-gown and all my pretty ornaments, and left me
here in this doorway--I am sure I don't know why, for there is n't any
music here."
"It is well she left this old shawl with you, else your mama would not
have a little countess to tell the tale to-morrow," observed the elder
man. Then, turning to his