"Ah, my child!" returned the marquis. "Yes, I can call you my child! You talk of balm poured upon wounds, but who, pray, allayed the pain of my wound a little, if not you? Your thoughts, your resolutions, your actions—I have loved everything that came from you, and everything has helped to prove to me that this at least had not been wasted—my efforts during so many years, to inculcate my opinions in you, to make you a man. Ah! I too have learned many things through this suffering. You say that you fought a long while against my ideas. That was because, in prosperity, they were mixed up with too many other things. Yes, I yielded to too many temptations. I was too proud of my name, and too fond of life. You might well have thought that there was more pride than reflection, more emotion than
