"Ah, my child!" returned the marquis. "Yes, I can call you my child! You talk of balm poured upon wounds, but who, pray, allayed the pain of my wound a little, if not you? Your thoughts, your resolutions, your actions--I have loved everything that came from you, and everything has helped to prove to me that this at least had not been wasted--my efforts during so many years, to inculcate my opinions in you, to make you a man. Ah! I too have learned many things through this suffering. You say that you fought a long while against my ideas. That was because, in prosperity, they were mixed up with too many other things. Yes, I yielded to too many temptations. I was too proud of my name, and too fond of life. You might well have thought that there was more pride than reflection, more emotion than reason in the principles whose real force you discovered when the test came. I did not derive from them, when I was fortunate, all that I should have done. In the rank in which Providence had placed me, I did not see clearly enough the good that one might do. Because of that I deserved to be punished, and, no doubt, my dear ones through me. In a race which has endured for centuries, many secret sins must have been committed, which demand expiation. I interpreted this terrible misfortune in that sense. I accepted it and offered it to God; and, as I told you, I forgave. And now," in a tone of infinite melancholy, "I must offer Him my solitary old age.--How solitary it will be without you! Without you!" he repeated; and, with more and more emotion, "and yet, if we chose!--You spoke the other day of my adopting a son. There have been families on the point of becoming extinct that have prolonged their existence in that way!--I am dreaming.--Suppose I should adopt you? Then you would not leave me. The world, having known nothing of what has happened, would not know of the secret compact between us. People would say: 'Claviers is crazy. It wasn't worth while to make such an outcry, only to give way finally.'--What do I care? I should have you. You would close my eyes."