"Come here and kiss me! then take your place at the table and talk to me. Give me the pleasure of hearing you say 'thou' to me! Mille tonnerres!"
So that was settled—she was his daughter. The child had saved him from an inglorious old age. He had cast aside the vices of the Egotist and to fill their place he had taken a passion for all eternity—the love of a father for his child! He adored the little infirm creature who limped around him in the coquettish, well-ordered room.
He had taught Pierrette to read, and now, recalling his own early lessons, he had set her a copy in writing. And he was never happier than when he sat in his polished chair watching the child bending over her copy, or, with face close to the paper, lapping up an ink-spot, as a kitten laps up cream. She had copied all the letters of the most interminable of adverbs!
Now he had but one cause for anxiety; he had nothing to leave her. He had taken a mania for saving; he was almost a miser; he planned and theorized. He must give up his tobacco! Even the blue "National" was too dear for him. He was saving money from his allowance; he would buy out a little fancy store; and then he could die in peace. Pierrette would have her shop; and behind it there would be a little room. He pushed his pipe away, even when Pierrette filled and lighted it. If she had that shop she could live in the room back of it, obscure and tranquil, in spite of her wooden leg! She could live then; and so, when on the walls of her little room she would hang the cross hard won by gallant and meritorious conduct in the field, it would remind her of the Captain!
. . . . . . . . . . . .
He walked with her every day on the parapet of the ramparts, and now and then the peasants passing through the town turned to gaze after the strange pair. They wondered at them. The veteran, untouched by all his wars; the child crippled, though still so young!
And once the Captain wept for joy. He had heard what they said: "Poor old man! what tales he could tell! But his daughter, how pretty and how sweet!"
RAPPACCINI'S DAUGHTER
BY NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE