r a pause, she added, "Perhaps God wills to take the place of their
father."

"Let me believe that my obedience is due to none but you," I cried.

She gave me one of her exquisitely gracious smiles, which so exalted my
heart that I should not have felt a death-blow if given at that moment.

"As soon as the king returns to Paris, go there; leave Clochegourde,"
she said. "It may be degrading to beg for places and favors, but it
would be ridiculous to be out of the way of receiving them. Great
changes will soon take place. The king needs capable and trustworthy
men; don't fail him. It is well for you to enter young into the affairs
of the nation and learn your way; for statesmen, like actors, have a
routine business to acquire, which genius does not reveal, it must be
learnt. My father heard the Duc de Choiseul say this. Think of me," she
said, after a pause; "let me enjoy the pleasures of superiority in a
soul that is all my own; for are you not my son?"

"Your son?" I said, sullenly.

"Yes, my son!" she cried, mocking me; "is not that a good place in my
heart?"

The bell rang for dinner; she took my arm and leaned contentedly upon
it.

"You have grown," she said, as we went up the steps. When we reached the
portico she shook my arm a little, as if my looks were importunate;
for though her eyes were lowered she knew that I saw only her. Then she
said, with a charming air of pretended impatience, full of grace and
coquetry, "Come, why don't you look at our dear valley?"

She turned, held her white silk sun-shade over our heads and drew
Jacques closely to her side. The motion of her head as she looked
towards the Indre, the punt, the meadows, showed me that in my absence
she had come to many an understanding with those misty horizons
and their vaporous outline. Nature was a mantle which sheltered her
thoughts. She now knew what the nightingale was sighing the livelong
night, what the songster of the sedges hymned with his plaintive note.

At eight o'clock that evening I was witness of a scene which touched me
deeply, and which I had never yet witnessed, for in my former visits I
had played backgammon with the count while his wife took the children
into the dining-room before their bedtime. The bell rang twice, and all
the servants of the household entered the room.

"You are now our guest and must submit to convent rule," said the
countess, leading me by the hand with that air of innocent gaiety which
distinguis