“Do you really want to go?” Stephen asked his sister. “We are so happy here. As for me, there are days when I am not sure.” Mélanie, with illumined eyes, replied: “I must, indeed, since God calls me,” adding, almost gaily, “But I shall carry a lot of handkerchiefs, a dozen at least, for I feel sure that I shall cry all the tears that are in me.” Why, oh why, then, that craze to go away when they said they were so happy at home? And I, too, why was I suffering in advance at the thought of leaving the house, since I had discovered that I was misunderstood and forlorn, and since I was determined to go? One evening toward the end of August our friend Abbé Heurtevant came to see us, with a lenten face, so long and dolorous that we all expected to hear of some catastrophe. Mother hastily spoke for us all. “Monsieur l’Abbé, for the love of God what has happened?” “Ah, madame, Monseigneur is dead!” I was the only one, except grandfather, who supposed him to be speaking of his ecclesiastical superior. But all the others understood, and bewailed the death of the Count de Chambord, who was known to have had an affection of the stomach for several days, or rather, as our abbé declared, to have been poisoned by strawberries. Aunt Deen burst out in tumultuous despair, my sisters endeavouring to console her, and father uttered a short obituary address which to me seemed lacking in heart. “It is a misfortune for France, which he would have governed wisely. Monseigneur the Count of Paris succeeds him: the two princes had become reconciled, and that was the crown of a noble life. But what is the matter with you, Abbé?” The abbé appeared to be even more inconsolable than Aunt Deen. Grandfather, who since the affair of the electoral lists had said less and less concerning his political opinions, could not control his tongue on this occasion: “Why, don’t you see that his prophecies are choking him? He is thinking of the Abbey of Orval and of Sister Rose-Colombe. No hope now of hoisting his ‘young prince’ to the throne. There he is, dead from eating too much fruit. And the new Pretender isn’t much younger than the old one.” “Father, I beg!” protested father. The abbé, crushed and crumpled in the depths of an easy chair, suddenly started up, drew up the long lines of his body till one might have thought he had climbed upon something in order to orate, and in a thundering voice made confession of his faith: “The King is dead. Long live the King! And the lilies will bloom again!” “They will bloom again,” repeated Aunt Deen, with conviction.