The baron’s face assumed a look of displeasure. “I want no more of
this; entertain your guests as you please, but spare me my presence here any further. I am glad if I can do anything towards making others happy, but happiness for myself is gone in this world.”
“O my lord!” said the Père Rudal, “why is your happiness gone? Because you have cast it away. When your daughter, your Clemence, threw herself and her little ones at your feet, and prayed you, for the love of the little Child born in Bethlehem, to take her little ones to your heart, why did you coldly turn away and refuse her?”
The baron turned to him with unfeigned surprise. “What do you mean?” said he. “I have never seen her since, and her children never.”
“But you see them now.”
“O father!” said a well-known voice, and his own daughter Clemence was kneeling in the midst of her little ones at his feet.
The old man sank back in his seat—his daughter’s arm was thrown around his neck—her head was resting on his heart—and after an instant’s struggle between love, the divine instinct, and pride, the human fault, his arm was clasped closely about her. Père Rudal lifted up the youngest child, and placed it on the baron’s knee, and then quietly stole away.
A merry place was the Château Regnier after that night; the rooms and halls were opened to the daylight—there was romping and laughing of children from one end of it to the other. The Count de Regnault was sent for on the very next day after that happy Christmas, and was embraced by the baron as a son—and evermore thereafter, with great splendor and merriment, was that feast held at the château; so that the Christmas festivals of Château Regnier became famous throughout France.
As for the young priest—that night, after he had seen Clemence once more in her father’s arms, he left the château and never returned to it. He went away to Toulouse, and wrote from thence to the baron, telling him that his love for him and his was unalterable, but his mission at the château was accomplished; the voice of duty called him elsewhere; and he begged the baron’s consent to depart. The baron gave his acquiescence reluctantly. Père Rudal soon after entered the order of the Trinitarians, for the redemption of captives, which had been recently established, and perished on a voyage to Tunis.
[115] Καλὴ δὲ καὶ ἡ τῶν Αὐσκίων—Strabo.