“Inexorable!” cried the old gentleman. “She is immovable!” And suddenly changing his tone, he cried,—
“But, after all, I am master here.”
“Dear papa, pray!”
“And since nothing can move you, I will speak to Mechinet, I will let Blangin know my will.”
Dionysia, turning as pale as death, but with burning eyes, drew back a step, and said,—
“If you do that, grandpapa, if you destroy my last hope”—
“Well?”
“I swear to you by the sacred memory of my mother, I will be in a convent to-morrow, and you will never see me again in your life, not even if I should die, which would certainly soon”—
M. de Chandore, raising his hands to heaven, and with an accent of genuine despair, exclaimed,—
“Ah, my God! Are these our children? And is this what is in store for us old people? We have spent a lifetime in watching over them; we have submissively gratified all their fancies; they have been our greatest anxiety, and our sweetest hope; we have given them our life day by day, and we would not hesitate to give them our life’s blood drop by drop; they are every thing to us, and we imagine they love us—poor fools that we are! One fine day, a man goes by, a careless, thoughtless man, with a bright eye and a ready tongue, and it is all over. Our child is no longer our own; our child no longer knows us. Go, old man, and die in your corner.”