neck; then----

He stretched both hands towards the little bed and, obeying a mighty
impulse of paternal affection, bent toward the boy to kiss him. But ere
his lips touched the child's he again gazed around him like a thief who
is afraid of being caught. At last he yielded to the longing which urged
him, and kissed little John--his, yes, his own son--first on his high,
open brow, and then on his red lips.

How sweet it was! Yet while he confessed this a painful emotion blended
with the pleasure.

He had again thought of Barbara, of her first kiss and the other joys of
the fairest May-time of his life, and the anxious fear stole upon him
that he might give sin a power over his soul which, after undergoing a
heavy penance, he thought he had broken.

Nothing, nothing at all, he now said to himself, ought to bind him to the
woman whom he had effaced from the book of his life as unworthy,
rebellious, lost to salvation; and, in a totally different mood, he again
gazed at the child. It already wore the semblance of an angel in the
gracious Virgin's train, and it should be dedicated to her and her divine
Son.

Then the boy drew his little arm from under his head.

How strong he was! how superbly the chest of this child not yet four
years old already arched! This bud, when it had bloomed to manhood, might
prove itself, as he himself had done in his youth, the stronger among the
strong. He carefully examined the harmoniously developed little muscles.
What a knight this child promised to become! Surely it was hardly created
for quiet prayer and the inactive peace of the cloister! He was still
free to dispose of the boy. If he should intrust his physical development
to the reliable Quijada, skilled in every knightly art, and to Count
Lanoi, famed as a rider and judge of horses; confide the training of his
mind and soul to the Bishop of Arras, the learned Frieslander Viglius, or
any other clever, strictly religious man, he might become a second Roland
and Bayard--nay, if a crown fell to his lot, he might rival his
great-grandfather, the Emperor Max, and--in many a line he, too, had done
things worthy of imitation--him, his father. The possession of this child
would fill his darkened life with sunshine, his heart, paralyzed by grief
and disappointment, with fresh pleasure in existence throughout the brief
remainder of his earthly pilgrimage. If he, the father, acknowledged him
and aided him to become a happy, perhaps a great