loved so dearly, has deigned to restore my child to me at last! But O my God! when I should be so happy to recover her, must I needs learn at the same time that she is guilty? that seduction, which wrecked her mother’s happiness, is the lot of my child also?” Monfréville had not finished when Louise and Chérubin threw themselves at his feet. With their faces bathed in tears, they kissed his knees, and Louise held out her arms, murmuring tremulously: “Forgive me, father--forgive us! Alas! I did not know my parents, and Chérubin was everything to me!” Monfréville opened his arms and the lovers threw themselves upon his heart. “Yes,” he said, as he embraced them, “yes, I must forgive you, for henceforth I shall have two children instead of one.” XXIX CONCLUSION Some time after that day which restored a father to Louise, Monsieur de Monfréville, who had publicly acknowledged her as his daughter, bestowed her hand on Marquis Chérubin de Grandvilain. And on the wedding-day, Nicole came to Paris, doubly happy to be present at the ceremony which sealed the happiness of him whom she still called her _fieu_, and of the child to whom she had, for a long time, been a mother. And Jasmin, who seemed to have recovered all his youthful vigor, absolutely insisted upon discharging fireworks in the courtyard for his master’s nuptials; but stout Turlurette opposed it, recalling the accidents that had happened at the time of Chérubin’s birth. So that Jasmin confined himself to firing a few rockets, with which he burned off what little hair he had left. As for Monsieur Gérondif, Chérubin, after bestowing a tidy little sum upon him, requested him to seek other pupils. The tutor, finding himself possessed of a round sum, determined to make a name for himself in Paris; he founded a Latin journal, wrote a tragedy, gave a course of lectures on universal knowledge, and tried to compel ladies to dress without corsets. After some time, having succeeded only in squandering his capital, he was very glad to return to Gagny and resume his post as schoolmaster. As the result of his fall among plates and glasses, Daréna was permanently disfigured, so that he dared not show himself in respectable society; he abandoned himself more freely than ever to his taste for debauchery, and after a wild orgy and a night passed at play with some low wretches, whose money he had won, he was found in the street, dead and stripped clean. Thus ended a man born in good society, brought up in opulence, and well educated, but reduced to the lowest social level by his vices. After losing his intimate friend, Monsieur Poterne became a dealer in return checks at the doors of theatres, and in that occupation he received several beatings because one could never get into the theatre with the checks that he sold.