The night was calm and serene, and the atmosphere was impregnated with the sweet fragrance of a profusion of spring blossoms, while numerous gas-jets illuminated the wide avenue that led to the entrance of the principal building.
The stranger, who still followed the throng, soon found himself in the midst of a semi-circle silently grouped around a high porch, listening to the following words from a voice that thrilled him with strange emotion:
"My friends," Louis was saying, "five years ago to-night, I lost the best of fathers in the frightful accident of the Versailles road. Being possessed of considerable wealth, my father might have lived in comfort and idleness; but he deprived himself of all luxury, working for his daily bread, slowly accumulating riches by his parsimony and augmenting them year by year by his abnegation. Then came his premature death, and I mourned over the loss of the greatest friend of humanity; for, according to his last wishes, I have consecrated his wealth to the accomplishment of three great and noble duties:
"Toward children.
"Toward young girls.
"Toward women whom age and infirmities render incapable of work.
"To poor children, my father has provided elementary instructions; to young girls, so often exposed to the seductions of vice, he has assured the pure and sweet joys of family life, so often denied to children of poverty; to aged or infirm women, he has given rest and comfort for the remainder of their days.
"These last wishes I have faithfully carried out to the limits of the means he has left me. The good thus done may be small in comparison to the innumerable miseries of humanity; but the man who does what he can, shares his bread with his famished brother and does his duty. This is a duty imposed on all alike, and all should strive to reach that ideal. My father conceived that generous thought—I am but the agent, the echo. The accomplishment of this glorious duty would fill my life with boundless felicity, were it not that I must weep over the death of a beloved and deeply regretted father."
As the speaker uttered the last words, a wild commotion spread through the assemblage; overcome by his emotion, the old mulatto had fallen unconscious in the arms of his neighbors. On hearing the cause of the sudden agitation, Louis ordered that the stranger be carried to his own apartments on the ground floor of the building, where he could receive prompt and careful attention; insisting at the same time that the wedding festivities should go on uninterrupted, and that Mariette and Madame Lacombe should preside in his place at the supper table in the garden.
In the meantime, the old man had been transported into Louis' study, which was furnished with the few odd pieces of furniture carried away from the old home so long shared in common between the father and son. When the young man entered, the stranger was still unconscious, his white hair falling in disorder over his brow and his unkempt beard almost totally concealing his features.