Another day he said to Michel: "I do not love you, because you are my father's son. A man who mingled his pure blood with that of so many women of diverse ranks and natures, must have had an unstable, complicated character, lacking unity; so that his sons are as different from one another as day is from night. If I should ever love you, whom I already esteem and admire, it will be because you have a mother whom I love, and who, I sometimes persuade myself, is my mother too." When the Piccinino was in condition to resume his adventurous life, which he had regretted so bitterly during the languorous days of his illness, he was suddenly appalled at the idea of putting an end to an existence which had become so sweet to him. He tried to assume a careless air, and refused the offers of a happier lot which Agatha and Michel made him; but it was evident that he was consumed by dismay and regret. "My dear boy," said the marquis, "you should accept the means of increasing the scope and effectiveness of the mission to which you have devoted yourself. It has never occurred to us to introduce you in a puerile and cowardly way into the society which you despise and for which you are not adapted. But, without submitting to any constraint, without changing in any way your independent principles, you can make a veritable alliance, over the heads of established laws, with veritable humanity. Hitherto you have gone astray because you have forced yourself to hate your fellowmen. It is their false and mischievous institutions against which you protest. In the bottom of your heart, you love your fellows, for you suffer by reason of their aversion and your own isolation. So change your notion of your functions as _justicier d'aventure_. Hitherto your aversion has usurped that title, for you have used it only for your personal vengeance and for the gratification of your instincts. What you have lacked for playing a nobler part and serving our country more effectively is a larger stage and resources proportioned to your ambition. Your brother offers you these resources; he is ready to share his income with you; and such a division will make you more powerful for your chosen work, without binding you to society in any way. You could not, to be sure, become a noble and a landed proprietor without entering into engagements to be sanctioned by law; but, by accepting secretly, from brotherly affection, the strength which you must have, you will remain a stranger to the world we live in, while you will become capable of working to correct its vices. You will be able to leave this unhappy island, where your efforts are too cramped to have their due effect. You can seek elsewhere companions and neophytes, enter into relations with the enemies of the public misery, work for the cause of slaves everywhere, study the means of putting an end to slavery, and return to us with knowledge and reinforcements which will