slowly on his mule
along the roads from Herouville to Ourscamp (the name of the village
near which the estate of Forcalier was situated) as if he wished to keep
that way unending. The infinite love he bore his daughter suggested a
bold project to his mind. One only being in all the world could make
her happy; that man was Etienne. Assuredly, the angelic son of Jeanne
de Saint-Savin and the guileless daughter of Gertrude Marana were twin
beings. All other women would frighten and kill the heir of Herouville;
and Gabrielle, so Beauvouloir argued, would perish by contact with any
man in whom sentiments and external forms had not the virgin delicacy of
those of Etienne. Certainly the poor physician had never dreamed of such
a result; chance had brought it forward and seemed to ordain it. But,
under, the reign of Louis XIII., to dare to lead a Duc d'Herouville to
marry the daughter of a bonesetter!

And yet, from this marriage alone was it likely that the lineage
imperiously demanded by the old duke would result. Nature had destined
these two rare beings for each other; God had brought them together by
a marvellous arrangement of events, while, at the same time, human ideas
and laws placed insuperable barriers between them. Though the old man
thought he saw in this the finger of God, and although he had forced
the duke to pass his word, he was seized with such fear, as his thoughts
reverted to the violence of that ungovernable nature, that he returned
upon his steps when, on reaching the summit of the hill above Ourscamp,
he saw the smoke of his own chimneys among the trees that enclosed his
home. Then, changing his mind once more, the thought of the illegitimate
relationship decided him; that consideration might have great influence
on the mind of his master. Once decided, Beauvouloir had confidence in
the chances and changes of life; it might be that the duke would die
before the marriage; besides, there were many examples of such marriage;
a peasant girl in Dauphine, Francoise Mignot, had lately married the
Marechal d'Hopital; the son of the Connetable Anne de Montmorency
had married Diane, daughter of Henri II. and a Piedmontese lady named
Philippa Duc.

During this mental deliberation in which paternal love measured all
probabilities and discussed both the good and the evil chances, striving
to foresee the future and weighing its elements, Gabrielle was walking
in the garden and gathering flowers for the vases of that