“And so,” said he, at last, “you see the unhappy situation which Fortinbras, like a true Don Quixote, has arranged between himself and Félise. She retains the sacred ideal of her mother, but holds in horror, very naturally, the father whom she has always adored. It is a bleeding wound in her innocent little soul. What can I do?”
Martin was deeply moved by the pitifulness of the tale. Poor little Félise, how much she must have suffered.
“Would it not be better,” said he, “to sacrifice a phantom mother—for that’s what it comes to—for the sake of a living father?”
Bigourdin agreed, but Fortinbras expressly forbade such a disclosure. In this he sympathised with Fortinbras, although the mother was his own flesh and blood. Truly he had not been lucky in sisters—one a bigote and the other an a
