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.