"Well, Mother, do not excite yourself about it, for it only makes your
asthma worse, and does no especial good to anybody. Things may be as you
say. Certainly I intended nothing irreligious. Yet these extended naps,
appropriate enough for saints and emperors, are out of place in one's own
family. So, if it is not stuff and nonsense, it ought to be. And that I
stick to."

"But we forget the boy, my dear," said the old lady. "Now listen, Florian
de Puysange. Thirty years ago last night, to the month and the day, it
was that you vanished from our knowledge, leaving my daughter a forsaken
bride. For I am what the years have made of Dame Melicent, and this is my
daughter Adelaide, and yonder is her daughter Sylvie de Nointel."

"La, Mother," observed the stout lady, "but are you certain it was the
last of April? I had been thinking it was some time in June. And I
protest it could not have been all of thirty years. Let me see now,
Sylvie, how old is your brother Richard? Twenty-eight, you say. Well,
Mother, I always said you had a marvelous memory for things like that,
and I often envy you. But how time does fly, to be sure!"

And Florian was perturbed. "For this is an awkward thing, and Tiburce has
played me an unworthy trick. He never did know when to leave off joking;
but such posthumous frivolity is past endurance. For, see now, in what a
pickle it has landed me! I have outlived my friends, I may encounter
difficulty in regaining my fiefs, and certainly I have lost the fairest
wife man ever had. Oh, can it be, madame, that you are indeed my
Adelaide!"

"Yes, every pound of me, poor boy, and that says much."