delicate! He alone remains of our three children, and you do not realise
how the affection of parents who feel age approaching is concentrated on
an only child! If I lost Edouard I should die!"

"I suppose, then, as you let him go, his presence at Paris was
necessary?"

"No; his mother went to obtain a loan which is needed for the
improvements required on the estate."

"Why, then, did you let him go?"

"I would willingly have kept him here, but his mother wished to take him.
A separation is as trying to her as to me, and we all but quarrelled over
it. I gave way."

"There was one way of satisfying all three--you might have gone also."

"Yes, but Monsieur le cure will tell you that a fortnight ago I was
chained to my arm-chair, swearing under my breath like a pagan, and
cursing the follies of my youth!--Forgive me, my father; I mean that I
had the gout, and I forgot that I am not the only sufferer, and that it
racks the old age of the philosopher quite as much as that of the
courtier."

The fresh wind which often rises just at sunset was already rustling in
the leaves; long shadows darkened the course of the Yonne and stretched
across the plain; the water, slightly troubled, reflected a confused
outline of its banks and the clouded blue of the sky. The three
gentlemen stopped at the end of the terrace and gazed into the already