this child will be another Maurice, with the same attractions and vices.
The poet does not forget that his dying friend confided the orphan to
him, and he endeavors to be kind and good to him and to bring him up
well. He sometimes has a feeling of sorrow when he discovers the same
instincts and traits in the child as in the man whom he had so dearly
loved and who had made him such trouble; in spite of all, he can not feel
the sentiments of a father for another's son. His own union has been
sterile.

Poor Amedee! Yet he is envied! The little joy that he has is mingled
with grief and sorrow, and he dares not confide it to the excellent
Louise--who suspects it, however--whose old and secret attachment for him
he surmises now, and who is the good genius of his household. Had he
only realized it before! It might have been happiness, genuine happiness
for him!

The leaves fall! the leaves fall!

After breakfast, while they were smoking their cigars and walking along
beside the masses of dahlias, upon which the large golden spider had spun
its silvery web, Amedee Violette and Paul Sillery had talked of times
past and the comrades of their youth. It was not a very gay
conversation, for since then there had been the war, the Commune. How
many were dead! How many had disappeared! And, then, this retrospective
review proves to one that one can be entirely deceived as to certain
people, and that chance is master.

Such an one, whom they had once considered as a great prose writer, as
the leader of a sect, and whose doctrines of art five or six faithful
disciples spread while copying his waistcoats and even imitating his