"Perhaps you do not yet know--that is to say, you have undoubtedly known for a long time--for your talented friends do not generally keep secrets from one another--in short, I have a daughter--'Have her while she is mine,' as Polonius says--a daughter, of whose existence I had no suspicion until recently. Upon the discovery of my fathership I knocked at my heart, and waited to hear whether the so-called voice of Nature within would awaken. _Pas le mains du monde._ You will find this inhuman. But remember that I did not lead a worse life in this good town than was the fashion at that time, and that this adventure came half-way to meet me--I wish to throw no shadow either upon the girl or her parents--_enfin_, they were very cordial with me, and I, in return, possibly went too far. A few years afterward, I felt something like a gentle gnawing in my left side, where one is supposed to carry his conscience. As it did not subside, I wrote to this place in order to inquire, as a friend of the family, after the health of its different members. The letter was returned by the post, as the address could not be found. "Now, looked at from a strictly moral point of view, I ought not to have felt, even after this, that I had justified myself. But what would you have? My contact with the king of the desert had somewhat hardened my skin, and the before-mentioned gnawing ceased. The girl had never been exactly what you would call beautiful, but was very attractive because of her freshness, her free nature, her merry laughter from a mouth of magnificent teeth. You know complexions of that kind have something especially dangerous about them for our weaker sex. To be brief, she had, in spite of all this, completely passed out of my memory until I saw her again to-day in her daughter--pardon, in our daughter, I meant to say." "You sought out the girl? And how did the poor child receive you?"