He leaned over, and two tears, the first shed by this austere man, fell on the young bowed head—her baptism of peace and pardon. Grief, repentance, the love of the child, obscured for a time, now manifested themselves violently. She hung convulsively on the neck of her father, and begged his pardon. They exchanged kisses, stifled cries, and little words of tenderness, that are the first elements of that pure and passionate, delicate and violent language of the domestic hearth, so little capable of description.
XIV.
The stars sparkled peacefully in a cloudless sky. The breath of the night, with its penetrating odors, came noiselessly, and mingled the white hair of the father with the black curls of the child. It refreshed their burning foreheads.
Peace has descended into their souls. Now and then a sob from Paganina is the only witness of the past storm.
Master Swibert, with his head inclined, speaks in a low voice. He says:
"My daughter, my tenderness for you knows no bounds. Trust to me. Arrived at the summit of life, I, whose head is whitening toward eternity, will tell you that, in this world, the only happiness given man is in the affections of his family. You cannot tell, before being a mother, what paternal affection is, and still less will you understand mine. I was ignorant of it myself until yesterday."
The child standing, her little feet united, pressed her head against the heart of her father.
The organist continued: "The angel of a woman never leaves the domestic hearth. If she lives in the world, her angel has forsaken her. A woman's crown is formed in shadow and silence; the gaze and admiration of a crowd will wither it. Your soul I love, my daughter; and our mutual love must never end. Do you understand me? Never! provided our souls rise together toward the abode of infinite love."
The child listens attentively; divining, by a sort of intuition, the sense of these teachings, engraving themselves, in letters of fire, on her heart; and which she will understand, each day, more and more.