rough your selfish love. I
feel incapable of working or of becoming anyone now, and yet I know I
was not intended to lead the dull, pleasureless life to which your
short-sighted affection has condemned me.'"

Jeanne turned to her son with the tears rolling down her cheeks.

"Oh, Poulet, you will never reproach me for having loved you too much,
will you?"

"No, mamma," promised the boy in surprise.

"You swear you will not?"

"Yes, mamma."

"You want to stay here, don't you?"

"Yes, mamma."

"Jeanne, you have no right to dispose of his life in that way," said the
baron, sternly. "Such conduct is cowardly--almost criminal. You are
sacrificing your child to your own personal happiness."

Jeanne hid her face in her hands, while her sobs came in quick
succession.

"I have been so unhappy--so unhappy," she murmured, through her tears.
"And now my son has brought peace and rest into my life, you want to
take him from me. What will become of me--if I am left--all alone now?"

Her father went and sat down by her side. "And am I no one, Jeanne?" he
asked, taking her in his arms. She threw her arms round his neck, and
kissed him fondly. Then in a voice still choked with tears and sobs:

"Yes, perhaps you are right papa, dear," she answered; "and I was
foolish; but I have had so much sorrow. I am quite willing for him to go
to college now."

Then Poulet, who hardly understood what was going to be done with him,
began to cry too, and his three mothers kissed and coaxed him and told
him to be brave. They all went up to bed with heavy hearts, and even the
baron wept when he was alone in his own room, though he had controlled
his emotion downstairs. It was resolved to send Paul to the college at
Havre at the beginning of the next term, and during the summer he was
more spoilt than ever. His mother moaned as she thought of the
approaching separation and she got ready as many clothes for the boy as
if he had been about to start on a ten years' journey.

One October morning, after a sleepless night, the baron, Jeanne, and
Aunt Lison went away with Poulet in the landau. They had already paid a
visit to fix upon the bed he was to have in the dormitory and the seat
he was to occupy in class, and this time Jeanne and Aunt Lison passed
the whole day in unpacking his things and arranging them in the little
chest of drawers. As the latter would not contain the quarter of what
she had brought, Jeanne went to the head master to a