It is the dream of all fathers to be continued in their sons. Colonel Dreher only wished to live over again in the hope of Revenge. I have already said that he fought like a demon in the year '70. When a young subaltern in the Guards, he had been in the charge at St. Privat, had had his horse killed under him, and had got a bullet through his arm. Captured at Metz, and taken on into Westphalia, he had found a way of escaping, of reaching Holland, and of rallying Faidherbe's army in time to get a splinter of shell in his thigh at Bapaume. The news of the armistice had found him in hospital, that of the treaty had disgusted him. He who burned to go on fighting, who felt no fatigue! The renunciation of the two Provinces had been a bitter blow, and the counter-blows more bitter still. As a Lorrain of Lunéville, he had quite a number of near relations in the neighbourhood of Sarrebourg, many of whom had not the courage to ruin themselves by throwing their lot in with their true fatherland. These people were dead for him, needless to say. But these repeated misfortunes had done not a little to contribute to the growing gloom of his character. He had rejoined his regiment and had been quartered successively at Joigny, Moulins, and Rouen where he had married, and lastly at Tours, where most of my childhood was spent. Decorated for distinguished service in the field, a superb leader of men, he would have been made a general but for his obstinate, though discreet opposition to a government timorous enough to put up with such peace terms. My mother, the one person I might really have loved, had died just as I attained my fourteenth birthday. I had finished growing up under the paternal tutelage. For a long time I succeeded in persuading myself that the Colonel felt heaven knows what secret fondness for me. Then with the audacity of youth, intoxicated by the first lucid glance I had cast on life, I admitted to myself that I had been duped. I was of very little account in this old man's eyes. Let him content himself with my deference, as I did with his correction! There was no intimacy between us. As I grew up, our relations came to be stamped with rather a cold courtesy, like that between strangers thrown together by chance, for the space of a voyage. My father never asked me about my ambitions, once only about my immediate prospects; it was after I had taken my second degree. He neither approved nor found fault with my intentions. Having been placed on the retired list just at this point he came to live in Paris. I never knew if it was to facilitate my studies.