Robert took the road to Clermont, and could have flown the entire distance, so eager was he to get to his old home. And again and again doubts would fill his mind as to whether he would find the loved grave; whether pitiless time would not in nine years, have effaced the letters which traced the name of his mother? Clermont at last appeared in the distance, then the village of Bains, and then he was at the door of the rectory, standing with a beating heart to see a loved face, but the door is opened by a strange priest, from whom he learns that the venerable curé whom he sought was dead, but in dying he left instructions to his successor; begging that Madame Dormeuil's grave should not be neglected, which gave Robert but another proof of his imperishable love. After obeying the first wish of his heart and visiting his mother's grave, he obtained the papers which concerned him, and, opening them with emotion, read as follows: "My dear son: I did not wish you to know the contents of these papers until you were twenty-one, because it seemed to me that before this time you would hardly comprehend them, and I thought it best to wait until you had experience and maturity of judgment. You know we are rarely willing to take the experience of others for our instruction; believing that what shipwrecked them we would have been wise enough to have avoided; that we would have acted better, reasoned better, than those who have preceded us on the perilous sea called the world. The blind lead the blind, and when we fall we are astonished. It is so with all men. Being feeble, they think they are strong; being dependent, they think they are free; being powerless, they think they are creatures of genius. But thou, my dear child, wilt have more strength than those who repose in themselves the care of their conduct, and do not invoke God to light them with his divine rays. In the moment of trial they fall; it happened so to me, my son, when I took my own feeble reason for my guide. But, though I have no grave faults to reproach myself for, it is not the less true that I have compromised thy future, and forgotten my duties as a wife and my duties as a Christian, for I have not been indulgent and forgetful of injuries. {71} To-day, by God's grace, I am calm. I judge myself more severely then he will judge me, and I feel guilty and cannot excuse myself to thy eyes, by my youth, inexperience, and the isolation in which I found myself, when I claimed the right of breaking the links which I ought to have respected for my son. But it was my fault, and I will have the courage to tell you all--to confess all my sins, and then ask for pardon. Dormeuil is not thy name, my child; it is mine, the name of my father, a plebeian name, but without blemish. Thy name is De Verceil, and thy father is the Count Sosthène de Verceil. At ten years of age, I lost my father; my mother