seized his hands.

"My dear, forgive, my dear!"

"You loathe me!" cried the Baron--the cry of his conscience.

For we all know the secret of our own wrong-doing. We almost always
ascribe to our victims the hateful feelings which must fill them with
the hope of revenge; and in spite of every effort of hypocrisy, our
tongue or our face makes confession under the rack of some unexpected
anguish, as the criminal of old confessed under the hands of the
torturer.

"Our children," he went on, to retract the avowal, "turn at last to be
our enemies--"

"Father!" Victorin began.

"You dare to interrupt your father!" said the Baron in a voice of
thunder, glaring at his son.

"Father, listen to me," Victorin went on in a clear, firm voice, the
voice of a puritanical deputy. "I know the respect I owe you too well
ever to fail in it, and you will always find me the most respectful and
submissive of sons."

Those who are in the habit of attending the sittings of the Chamber
will recognize the tactics of parliamentary warfare in these fine-drawn
phrases, used to calm the factions while gaining time.

"We are far from being your enemies," his son went on. "I have quarreled
with my father-in-law, Monsieur Crevel, for having rescued your notes of
hand for sixty thousand francs from Vauvinet, and that money is, beyond
doubt, in Madame Marneffe's pocket.--I am not finding fault with you,
father," said he, in reply to an impatient gesture of the Baron's; "I
simply wish to add my protest to my cousin Lisbeth's, and to point
out to you that though my devotion to you as a father is blind and
unlimited, my dear father, our pecuniary resources, unfortunately, are
very limited."

"Money!" cried the excitable old man, dropping on to a chair, quite
crushed by this argument. "From my son!--You shall be repaid your money,
sir," said he, rising, and he went to the door.

"Hector!"

At this cry the Baron turned round, suddenly showing his wife a face
bathed in tears; she threw her arms round him with the strength of
despair.

"Do not leave us thus--do not go away in anger. I have not said a
word--not I!"

At this heart-wrung speech the children fell at their father's feet.

"We all love you," said Hortense.

Lisbeth, as rigid as a statue, watched the group with a superior smile
on her lips. Just then Marshal Hulot's voice was heard in the anteroom.
The family all felt the importance of secrecy, and the scene suddenly
changed. The