And notwithstanding all this the king destroyed the forest, the man who believed himself more firmly fixed to the throne than the trees were to the earth. Nothing did he understand of the really great; everything was stripped of the glamour of imagination, and only its material value did he appraise. He said to himself, "Every man can be bought, just as every tree can be sold. I possess vast forests, I will sell the trees, and I will purchase men." Sire, you were self-deceived. There are other things in life than algebra and mathematics: there is faith, there is belief; you put no faith in others, and others therefore put no faith in you; you breathed scorn on the past, and now the past scorns you. What a long way we have travelled, though, from the home of M. Deviolaine--which to me seemed such a palace! Glorious trees, you are more than a palace--you are like a temple! a temple wherein the Lord reveals Himself to me, as I lie at your feet, and try to study the stars, in utter ignorance of their names, through the moving canopy of your foliage, on the fine nights of summer. How many times, when the laughing, restless spirit of childhood begins to yield to the dreams of early manhood; how many times, kissed by the wind-bent grass under me, have I stretched two eager hands towards some star more brilliant than others, and tried to seize a ray of moonlight as it played upon my face! And I have prayed: "Saviour, who art in heaven! Saviour, who art on earth! Saviour, who art everywhere! O Saviour, take me in Thy mighty arms and make me an instrument to glorify and bless Thy power; a harp to sing to Thee, a lyre to praise Thee, a voice to pray to Thee! Make me grow great, O Lord, so that I may be nearer to Thee! and the greater I am the more humbly will I acknowledge Thy name, Thy splendour, Thy majesty! "It is Thou, O God! who makest the forests to grow which kings sell; Thou who createst the little birds that sing among their branches; Thou who caressest them with the breeze which is Thy smile, and refreshest them with sunshine, which is Thy face, and tearest them up in the storm, which is Thy anger! "Lord, Thou alone art great, Thou alone art eternal!" But to return to M. Deviolaine and his house. Although it was large, its accommodation was far from being superfluous. M. Deviolaine had veritably the family of a patriarch. He had one son and two daughters by his first marriage, and a son and two more daughters by his second. The latter were our relatives, our cousin being his second wife. As the name of M. Deviolaine and those of his children are constantly recurring in the relation of the first portion of my life, I must dwell for a moment on this ample family. The names of the three children by the first marriage were Victor, Léontine, and Léonore; those of the three children of the second were, Félix, Cécile, and Augustine.