Beatrice died, and the heart of her husband became as a thing of stone. To any other, perhaps, the daughter she had left him would have recalled, in a tenderer manner, the joys he had lost, and re-illumined the bright affections which her death had extinguished. There are some persons in whose bosom the necessity of affection seems placed by nature, never to be eradicated. But with Villars it was not so. He cursed the weakness which had enthralled his heart, and made it either a prey to love or sorrow; and he fortified himself against the assault of any mortal feeling. He would do his duty strictly, fully, towards his child; but that was all which he ever proposed to his own mind. There was, indeed, one tribute he paid to the memory of Beatrice. She had loved music. Her mind had been attuned to all harmony; and she had delighted in all that was bright and sweet in every art which softens the asperities of human existence. And Villars resolved, he scarcely knew why, to give his daughter all her mother's accomplishments. It was like writing her epitaph on the heart of her child. This only seemed to show the least spark of feeling yet unextinguished in his breast; for there was now a degree of bitterness mixed with the original sternness of his character. He looked upon the world with disappointed eyes, and gladly turned away from the view, for there was nothing but a desert round about him. France no longer needed defenders. His duty to his country was done; and, quitting the army, he collected together his little property, and retired to dwell near his native town of Arles. It was more probably chance than any taste for picturesque beauty, which directed him in the situation he chose for his future residence; but of all the neighbourhood it was the most lovely and the most retired. It was surrounded by wood, with the Rhone sparkling through the trees beyond, and the remains of an antique Roman arch crowning the hill above. The country was covered with olive-grounds and vineyards, and scattered with small villages: but there was not for a considerable distance round--indeed, nowhere near, except in the town of Arles--a house of any consequence, whose proximity might have disturbed the solitude of his retirement; and here, for fifteen years, lived Armand Villars, secluded from a world he despised, seeking no commune but with his own thoughts, and dividing his time between the cultivation of his ground, solitary study, and the education of the daughter which Beatrice had left him.