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Updated: June 29, 2025
My happiness shall have a royal inauguration!! I do not know whether I ever told you, my friend, that, after those fatal events, seeing Dagobert and his wife reduced to misery, poor 'Mother Bunch' hardly able to earn a wretched subsistence, Agricola soon to become a father, and myself deprived of my curacy, and suspended by my bishop, for having given religious consolations to a Protestant, and offered up prayers at the tomb of an unfortunate suicide I considered myself justified in employing a small portion of the sum intrusted to me by Mdlle. de Cardoville in the purchase of this farm in Dagobert's name.
"Kiss me, at least," said Frances, with moist eyes, "for you are the very best creature in the world." So saying, she hastened cut of the room. Rose and Blanche were left alone with Mother Bunch; at length had arrived the moment for which they had waited with so much impatience. Dagobert's wife proceeded to St. Merely Church, where her confessor was expecting to see her.
By skillful devices, Dagobert and his son Agricola were drawn out of the way while Rose and Blanche Simon were decoyed into a nunnery, under the eyes of Dagobert's wife. But she had been bound against interfering by the influence of the Jesuit confessional.
Up to this time, the orphans, in their innocent ambition to be protected by an archangel, had quite forgotten the circumstance that Dagobert's wife had adopted a forsaken child, who was called Gabriel, and who was now a priest and missionary. On entering the room, he was not a little surprised to see a stranger holding the hands of Rose and Blanche familiarly in his own.
It is very interesting, as there is a poetic as well as a realistic side to the strange conception. Near Dagobert's monument some one had left a visiting card, after the curious French fashion. "It seemed so very late in the day to be calling upon King Dagobert," as Walter remarked.
The two sisters, who saw, by the expression of Dagobert's countenance, that he felt really uneasy, determined no longer to trifle with his kindness. They exchanged a glance, and Rose, taking in her little hand the coarse, broad palm of the veteran, said to him: "Come, do not plague yourself! We will tell you all about the visits of our friend, Gabriel." "There you are again! He has a name, then?"
It must be confessed, however, that the excellent mother thought less of herself, than of the grief which her son must feel in thinking over her deplorable position. At this moment there was a knock at the door. "Who is there?" said Frances. "It is me Father Loriot." "Come in," said Dagobert's wife. The dyer, who also performed the functions of a porter, appeared at the door of the room.
Mean and poor as this interior may perhaps appear, it would not seem so to the greater number of artisans; for the bed was supplied with two mattresses, clean sheets, and a warm counterpane; the old-fashioned press contained linen; and, moreover, Dagobert's wife occupied all to herself a room as large as those in which numerous families, belonging to honest and laborious workmen, often live and sleep huddled together only too happy if the boys and girls can have separate beds, or if the sheets and blankets are not pledged at the pawnbroker's.
"Don't you remember about her 'King Dagobert's daughter, ill-fated and fair to look upon? Well, at this village of hers we must either light our lamps or rest for the night, which ever Sir Samuel I mean her ladyship decides." So he stopped, in a little town which looked a place of fairy enchantment under the moon.
After having rubbed Dagobert's hand with his muzzle, he went in turns to greet Rose and Blanche, and also Frances and Agricola; but seeing that they took but little notice of him, he perceived Mother Bunch, who stood apart, in an obscure corner of the room, and carrying out the popular saying, "the friends of our friends are our friends," he went and licked the hands of the young workwoman, who was just then forgotten by all.
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