ghts; they are anterior to the conventions of society,
and a thousand times more exalted. The honor of her I called my AEgle, is
dearer to me than all the treasures of the world, and I would cleave the
soul of any rash being who should attempt to tarnish it. In yielding to
the ardor of my vows, she but conformed to the custom of a great epoch
when the uncertainty of life and the constant existence of war
simplified all formalities. And in conclusion, I do not wish that my
grandchildren, yet to be born, should be ignorant that the source of
their blood is in the veins of Fougas. Your Langevin is but an intruder
who covertly slipped into my family. A commissary! It's almost a sutler!
I spurn under foot the ashes of Langevin!"

His obstinacy would not yield to the arguments of Mme. Renault, but it
succumbed to the entreaties of Clementine. The young creole twisted him
around her finger with irresistible grace.

"My good Grandpa this, my pretty little Grandpa that; my old baby of a
Grandpa, we'll send you off to college if you're not reasonable!"

She used to seat herself familiarly on Fougas' knee, and give him little
love pats on the cheeks. The Colonel would assume the gruffest possible
voice, and then his heart would overflow with tenderness, and he would
cry like a child.

These familiarities added nothing to the happiness of Leon Renault; I
even think that they slightly tempered his joy. Yet he certainly did not
doubt either the love of his betrothed or the honor of Fougas. He was
forced to admit that between a grandfather and his granddaughter such
little liberties are natural and proper and could justly offend no one.
But the situation was so new and so unusual that he needed a little time
to adapt his feelings to it, and forget his chagrin. This grandfather,
for whom he had paid five-hundred francs, whose ear he had broken, for
whom he had bought a burial-place in the Fontainebleau cemetery: this
ancestor younger than himself, whom he had seen drunk, whom he had found
agreeable, then dangerous, then insupportable: this venerable head of
the family who had begun by demanding Clementine's hand and ended by
pitching his future grandson into the heliotropes, could not all at once
obtain unmingled respect and unreserved affection.

M. and Mme. Renault exhorted their son to submission and deference. They
represented M. Fougas to him as a relative who ought to be treated with
consideration.

"A few days of patience!