he birth of her second son she
did obtain from her husband a "dot" for the young girl, who was married
soon after to Beauvouloir. The "dot" and his savings enabled the
bonesetter to buy a charming estate called Forcalier near the castle
of Herouville, and to give his life the dignity of a student and man of
learning.

Comforted by the kind physician, the countess felt that to her were
given joys unknown to other mothers. Mother and child, two feeble
beings, seemed united in one thought, they understood each other long
before language could interpret between them. From the moment when
Etienne first turned his eyes on things about him with the stupid
eagerness of a little child, his glance had rested on the sombre
hangings of the castle walls. When his young ear strove to listen and to
distinguish sounds, he heard the monotonous ebb and flow of the sea
upon the rocks, as regular as the swinging of a pendulum. Thus places,
sounds, and things, all that strikes the senses and forms the character,
inclined him to melancholy. His mother, too, was doomed to live and die
in the clouds of melancholy; and to him, from his birth up, she was the
only being that existed on the earth, and filled for him the desert.
Like all frail children, Etienne's attitude was passive, and in that he
resembled his mother. The delicacy of his organs was such that a sudden
noise, or the presence of a boisterous person gave him a sort of fever.
He was like those little insects for whom God seems to temper the
violence of the wind and the heat of the sun; incapable, like them,
of struggling against the slightest obstacle, he yielded, as they
do, without resistance or complaint, to everything that seemed to him
aggressive. This angelic patience inspired in the mother a sentiment
which took away all fatigue from the incessant care required by so frail
a being.

Soon his precocious perception of suffering revealed to him the power
that he had upon his mother; often he tried to divert her with caresses
and make her smile at his play; and never did his coaxing hands, his
stammered words, his intelligent laugh fail to rouse her from her
reverie. If he was tired, his care for her kept him from complaining.

"Poor, dear, little sensitive!" cried the countess as he fell asleep
tired with some play which had driven the sad memories from her mind,
"how can you live in this world? who will understand you? who will love
you? who will see the treasures hidden in t