e family to deal with her. Has the
Illustrissimo any further commands?'

'None,' began the Chevalier; then, suddenly, 'This unhappy infant--is it
healthy? Did it need any of your treatment?'

'Signor, no. It was a fair, healthy bambina of a year old, and I heard
the mother boasting that it had never had a day's illness.'

'Ah, the less a child has to do in the world, the more is it bent
on living,' said the Chevalier with a sigh; and then, with a parting
greeting, he dismissed the Italian, but only to sup under the careful
surveillance of the steward, and then to be conveyed by early morning
light beyond the territory where the affairs of Ribaumont were
interesting.

But the Chevalier went through a sleepless night. Long did he pace up
and down his chamber, grind his teeth, clench his fist and point them at
his head, and make gestures of tearing his thin gray locks; and many a
military oath did he swear under his breath as he thought to what a
pass things had come. His brother's daughter waiting on an old Huguenot
_bourgeois_, making sugar-cakes, selling her hair! And what next? Here
was she alive after all, alive and disgracing herself; alive--yes, both
she and her husband--to perplex the Chevalier, and force him either to
new crimes or to beggar his son! Why could not the one have really died
on the St. Bartholomew, or the other at La Sablerie, instead of putting
the poor Chevalier in the wrong by coming to live again?

What had he done to be thus forced to peril his soul at his age? Ah, had
he but known what he should bring on himself when he wrote the unlucky
letter, pretending that the silly little child wished to dissolve the
marriage! How should he have known that the lad would come meddling
over? And then, when he had dexterously brought about that each should
be offended with the other, and consent to the separation, why must
royalty step in and throw them together again? Yes, and he surely had a
right to feel ill-used, since it was in ignorance of the ratification of
the marriage that he had arranged the frustration of the elopement, and
that he had forced on the wedding with Narcisse, so as to drive Eustacie
to flight from the convent--in ignorance again of her life that he had
imprisoned Berenger, and tried to buy off his clams to Nid de Merle with
Diane's hand. Circumstances had used him cruelly, and he shrank from
fairly contemplating the next step.

He knew well enough what it must be. Without loss