They suffered him to bemoan his dead son unhindered by stereotyped consolations. The two women stood by, and pitied him in silence. The little boy stared wonderingly, and at last crept up to the sorrow-stricken father. "Why do you cry, poor old man?" he asked. "You have not lost your papa and mamma, as I have lost mine, have you? I want to stay with you and be your little boy, please. She told me to say that," he added, pointing to Cydalise.--"And I have said it right, haven't I?" he asked of the same lady.--"I think I shall love you, because you are like my papa, only older and uglier," the little one concluded, with angelic candour. The seigneur of Beaubocage dried his tears with an effort. Beaubocage--Cotenoir. Ah, me! what empty sounds those two once magic names seemed to him now that his son's life had been sacrificed to so paltry an ambition, so sordid a passion, so vile and grovelling a desire! He took the boy on his knee, and kissed him tenderly. His thoughts bridged over a chasm of five-and-twenty years as his lips pressed that fair young brow; and it was his own son--the son whom he had disowned--whose soft hair was mingling itself now with the grey bristles on his rugged chin. "My child," he murmured softly, "the fear is that I shall love thee too well, and be to thee as much too weakly indulgent as I was wickedly stern to thy father. Anything is easier to humanity than justice." This was said to himself rather than to the boy. "Tell me thy name, little one," he asked presently, after a few moments' pensive meditation. "I have two names, monsieur." "Thou must call me grandfather. And the two names?" "Francois Gustave." "I shall call thee Gustave." "But papa always called me Francois, and mamma said it was the name of a cruel man; but papa said he loved the name--" "Ah, no more, little one!" cried the lord of Beaubocage suddenly; "thou knowest not with what dagger-thrusts thou dost pierce this poor old heart." CHAPTER III. GUSTAVE THE SECOND. The little Gustave grew and flourished. Such love was lavished on him as rarely falls to the lot of children, though the spring of many lives may be rich in love's pure white blossom. The existence of this child seemed all happiness. He brought hope, and a sense of atonement, and all sweet things, to the quiet family at Beaubocage; and as he grew from childhood to boyhood, from boyhood to manhood, it seemed to that household as if the first Gustave of their love had never been taken from them. That Orphic fable of Zagreus repeats itself in many households. For the one bright creature lost another is given; and then comes a time when it is almost difficult to separate the image of the missing one from the dear substitute who so nearly fills his place.