"And you are up already?" asked her husband.
"Yes. I have been out to my confessor's. You have made a clean breast to your friend at home; I have done the same in the confessional, and I have come home much happier than I went, and I truly hope much better." With that she bent down to the child, and kissed it tenderly.
"I have been an unnatural and undutiful mother," she said, in a low, trembling voice, "and if you, in your generous pity, in the overflowing kindness of your nature, had not taken this poor innocent to your heart, it would not have known the tender love, the sweet care of a parent. Father Augustin has shown me the great, black sin in my breast. How can I hope for mercy from Heaven if I mercilessly lock my heart against my own innocent offspring? How can I hope for love and respect from my other children, if I withhold a mother's love from this one? Oh, my dearest husband! here in the presence of your friend, whom you have made cognisant of our past sorrows and trials, I thank you from the bottom of my heart for the love you have borne my child!" And before he could prevent the action she had bent down and pressed her lips to his hand.
"Flamma! dearest!" he said, overcome by his emotion, "you have been the truest, the most considerate, most loving, and most dutiful of all wives and mothers; but this day you have filled my cup of happiness to the brim. This one drop, the mother's kiss to the sweet innocent, was wanting. This day shall henceforth be kept as a high holiday, as this little darling's real birthday, for it has given him a mother."
He held up the boy to her, and at the sweet, inviting smile and the opened arms the little one threw open his arms also; one of them he drew around his mother's, the other around his father's neck, and then he showered a volley of kisses and caresses on both. Never in all my life have I seen a picture more lovely and beautiful than this.
"Come, my little one," said the mother, after a while, to the child, "it is too early yet for you to rise. Come to your little brothers and sisters and sleep awhile longer," and, nodding sweetly to us, she disappeared, with the child on her arm, through the tapestry portière that led to the children's bedroom.
The "Silver King" silently pressed my hand as I said—
"Sir, you are the happiest man on earth, nor can all the crowned monarchs of the world compare to you in wealth!"
"Yes," he said, after a while, "I am very happy. But I owe you an explanation, before I take leave of you. You may think it singular that a man who is the father of a family should disclose such intimate secrets to a friend of whom he knows beforehand that he will make public use of the disclosure, and relate to his readers the events he has learned. But, you see, so much has already been said about my wife and me—the fantastic imagination of one half of our fellow-creatures has invented so much to feed the idle curiosity of the other half, that the plain truth will serve in general as a cooling sedative. There are different versions afloat as to how we got our money. Some say that I was a general spy of the Prussians, and that my money was a fee for the information furnished, or, in plain words, the betrayal of the positions of the French forces. Others say that my wife had been the mistress of a King, and was enriched by him, and that she still draws a life-pension from the Civil List; while superstitious fools will have it that I have sold myself to the Devil, and am supplied by him with infernal lore. Against all of these the disclosure of the plain truth will be the best defence. Human I am and have been, and human have been the temptations and trials that have beset me. The only Devil to whom, for a time, I sold myself, was the demon in my own breast—a poor, feeble spirit, and long ago subdued by the more potent angel of love and peace."