ent him, crying: "My son is not coming! I shall
go to meet him!" Then he ran out of his room and fell prostrate on the
floor of the antechamber. He had just expired.

The doctor had been summoned, and the cure. The doctor had arrived too
late. The son had also arrived too late.

By the dim light of the candle, a large tear could be distinguished on
the pale and prostrate colonel's cheek, where it had trickled from his
dead eye. The eye was extinguished, but the tear was not yet dry. That
tear was his son's delay.

Marius gazed upon that man whom he beheld for the first time, on that
venerable and manly face, on those open eyes which saw not, on those
white locks, those robust limbs, on which, here and there, brown
lines, marking sword-thrusts, and a sort of red stars, which indicated
bullet-holes, were visible. He contemplated that gigantic sear which
stamped heroism on that countenance upon which God had imprinted
goodness. He reflected that this man was his father, and that this man
was dead, and a chill ran over him.

The sorrow which he felt was the sorrow which he would have felt in the
presence of any other man whom he had chanced to behold stretched out in
death.

Anguish, poignant anguish, was in that chamber. The servant-woman was
lamenting in a corner, the cure was praying, and his sobs were audible,
the doctor was wiping his eyes; the corpse itself was weeping.

The doctor, the priest, and the woman gazed at Marius in the midst of
their affliction without uttering a word; he was the stranger there.
Marius, who was far too little affected, felt ashamed and embarrassed at
his own attitude; he held his hat in his hand; and he dropped it on the
floor, in order to produce the impression that grief had deprived him of
the strength to hold it.

At the same time, he experienced remorse, and he despised himself for
behaving in this manner. But was it his fault? He did not love his
father? Why should he!

The colonel had left nothing. The sale of big furniture barely paid the
expenses of his burial.

The servant found a scrap of paper, which she handed to Marius. It
contained the following, in the colonel's handwriting:--

"For my son.--The Emperor made me a Baron on the battle-field of
Waterloo. Since the Restoration disputes my right to this title which I
purchased with my blood, my son shall take it and bear it. That he will
be worthy of it is a matter of course." Below, the colonel had added:
"At that