gaze on it while it slept was a joy to her! Oh, if he only
understood, he would never have been so cruel as to send it away.

All the baron's arguments as to the advantages to the baby which were to
be derived from his scheme, and the wonderful health and strength it was
to derive from leading a less luxurious life, failed to reassure the
baroness, and she passed a sleepless night, and looked so ill and
miserable the next morning that the baron was angry with her for looking
ill, and with himself for being the cause. No one in the house but the
baroness had been told the night before what had become of the baby, the
general opinion being that it had been taken or sent to some woman in
the neighbourhood to look after; but when it became known that it was
sent away in Leon's charge no one knew where, the sympathy with the
baroness was universal, and the baron found himself looked upon as a
jealous tyrant, with no real love for either his wife or child.

"A nice father you are," cried his brother Jacques.

"The idea of trusting Leon with a baby. Why, he will pitch it overboard
if it cries," said little Louis, a remark which so annoyed the baron
that he promptly seized Louis by the collar and turned him out of the
room.

"You really must have been mad, Arnaud, to dream of such a thing as
entrusting Leon, of all people in the world, with an infant," said the
old baroness, for once taking the part of her daughter-in-law against
her son.

Pere Yvon said nothing just then; it would not have been wise to have
done so while the baron's temper was ruffled by the criticisms of his
family or in their presence, but when he was alone with Arnaud, Pere
Yvon spoke his mind pretty freely, and read the baron a severer lecture
than he had ever done all the years he was under his tuition.

It was nothing but jealousy which had prompted such a mad, cruel act,
and jealousy of the most unreasonable--he might almost say
unpardonable--kind: a father to be jealous of his wife's love for his
own child! There was a German saying, excellent in the original, but
which lost the double play upon the words in the translation which Pere
Yvon quoted to the baron--

"Die Eifersucht ist eine Leidenschaft,
Der mit Eifer sucht muss Leiden schaffen,"

which means, freely translated, that jealousy is a passion which brings
misery to him who indulges in it; and Pere Yvon impressed upon Arnaud
that if any misfortune happened to the baby, he woul