which
she would be sure not to meet any one; she admired him, spoilt him, took
him to her heart, worshipped him with that grandmotherly adoration which
is the last love of a woman's life, giving her an excuse for living
a few years longer in order to see the little ones springing up and
growing around her. Then when the baby Vicomte was a little bigger and
returned to live with his father and mother, a treaty was made, for
the Comtesse could not give up her beloved visits; at the sound of the
grandmother's ring, Irma humbly and silently disappeared, or else the
child was taken to his grandmother's house, and thus spoilt by his
two mothers. He loved them equally, somewhat astonished to feel in
the warmth of their caresses, a kind of exclusive-ness, a wish to
monopolize. D'Athis, careless of everything but his verses, absorbed by
his growing fame, was content to adore his little Robert, to talk of him
to everyone and to imagine that the child belonged to him, and him only.
This illusion did not last.

"I should like to see you married," his mother said to him one day.

"Yes, but how about the child?" "Don't worry yourself about that. I have
picked out for you a young girl of good family but poor, who adores you.
I have introduced Robert to her, and they are already great friends.
Besides, the first year I will keep the darling with me. Afterwards, we
shall see."

[Illustration: p200-211]

"And--the mother?" hesitated the poet, reddening a little, for it was
the first time that he had spoken of Irma to his mother.

[Illustration: p201-212]

"Pooh!" replied the old dowager, laughing, "we will settle something
handsome on her, and I am quite sure she will soon be married also. The
_bourgeois_ of Paris is not particular."

That very evening, d'Athis, who had never been desperately in love
with his mistress, spoke to her of these arrangements and found her as
usual--submissive and apparently docile to his will. But the next
day, when he returned home, he found that mother and child had flown.
Finally, they were discovered in a wretched hut on the borders of the
Forest of Rambouillet, with Irma's father; and when the poet arrived he
found his son, his young prince, in his velvet and lace, jumping on
the old poacher's knee, playing with his pipe, running after the hens,
delighted to shake his fair curls in the fresh air. D'Athis, though much
upset by emotion, pretended to laugh the affair off, and wished at once
to take