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"I am old; yes, I am very old," she would say, looking up from her spinning-wheel in her house-door, and shading her eyes from the sun, "very old ninety-two last summer. But when one has a roof over one's head, and a pot of soup always, and a grandson like mine, and when one has lived all one's life in the Berceau de Dieu, then it is well to be so old.
Green retreats succeeded to winding walks; from the shady berceau you vaulted on the noble terrace; and if, for an instant, you felt wearied by treading the velvet lawn, you might rest in a mossy cell, while your mind was soothed by the soft music of falling waters.
The green nest of the Berceau seemed to overflow with the singing of birds and the blossoming of flowers. The corn-lands promised a rare harvest, and the apple orchards were weighed down with their red and white blossoms.
"Why art thou sad?" whispered Margot, with wistful eyes. "Thou art exempt from war service, my love?" Bernadou shook his head. "The poor will suffer somehow," was all he answered. Yet to him, as to all the Berceau, the news was not very terrible, because it was so vague and distant an evil so far off and shapeless.
"God is good," she murmured, as she stretched herself to sleep beneath the eaves, "God is good. Maybe, when He takes me to Himself, if I be worthy, He will tell His holy saints to give me a little corner in His kingdom, that He shall fashion for me in the likeness of the Berceau." For it seemed to her that, than the Berceau, heaven itself could hold no sweeter or fairer nook of Paradise.
In 1800, the Constellation engaged with the French frigate Vengeance of fifty-four guns, near Guadaloupe; but owing to the darkness of the night the latter escaped, after having thrice struck her colors and lost one hundred and sixty men in the engagement. The same year, the United States frigate Boston captured the French national corvette Le Berceau.
The torches were flung with a laugh on the dry thatched roofs; brands snatched from the house fires on the hearths were tossed among the dwelling-houses and the barns. The straw and timber flared alight like tow. An old man, her nearest neighbour, rushed to the cottage of Reine Allix and seized her by the arm. "They fire the Berceau," he screamed. "Quick! quick! or you will be burned alive!"
May you all be espoused to husbands who will execute all your whims and fancies with equal rapidity and good taste! In your berceau I will walk; but if you are destined to reside in golden palaces, you must expect little of Uncle's company.
But we heard later that little Claudis, my aunt's youngest-born, a volunteer not nineteen, died at it. If we had known, we should not have gone up and lit the bonfire." This woman, who had been born in that time of famine and flame, was the happiest creature in the whole hamlet of the Berceau.
In the library, that opens on a terrace, which is to be covered with a berceau, and converted into a garden, are two mirrors, vis-
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