Years passed by; he got beyond his fiftieth year, grew bent, and walked with difficulty, but he never missed performing the duty he had imposed on himself for his unknown friend.
The house where the coffin was placed had successively been let to several families; but he had arranged that the funereal room should never be touched. The lodgers bowed to the scholar when he came, and talked to him; the whole town was entertained with this touching example of such everlasting love.
"So much constancy and such fidelity cannot remain without reward," they said.
But time slipped by and nothing came to change the regular life of the old man.
On his seventieth birthday, as he went to his neighbours, he remarked a violent excitement.
"My wife has just had a child," said the chief of the family, going to meet him. "Come and wish her happiness; she does not cease to ask for you."
"Is it a boy?"
"No, unhappily, a girl, but such a pretty little thing."
Followed by the happy father, the scholar with white hair penetrated into the room; the mother smiled, holding out the baby to him. Golden-dragon suddenly started; the child held out her arms to him and on her little lips, hardly formed, hovered the shadow of a disappeared smile, the smile of the unknown woman.
And as he looked an extraordinary sensation troubled him; he felt he was growing younger, more vigorous. Soon, in the midst of the cries of admiration of the whole family, the bent old man grew straight again; his grey hair turned black, and the change continued; he became a young man, a boy, and soon a child.