f
the present. After twenty years I came to live in that chateau where she
whom I once loved had lived and died. I became the lord of that estate
which her husband once possessed, and where in happiness they had dwelt
together. I will not dwell upon the thoughts such associations ever give
rise to; I dare not, old as I am, evoke them."

He paused for some minutes, and then went on: "Two years ago I learned
that Mademoiselle de Meudon was the daughter of my once loved Marie.
From that hour I felt no longer childless. I watched over her,--without,
however, attracting notice on her part,--and followed her everywhere.
The very day I saw you first at the Polytechnique, I was beside her.
From all I could learn and hear, her life bad been one of devoted
attachment to her brother, and then to Madame Bonaparte. Her heart, it
was said, was buried with him she once loved,--at least none since
had ever won even the slightest acknowledgment from her bordering on
encouragement.

"Satisfied that she was everything I could have wished my own daughter,
and feeling that with youth the springs of affection rarely dry up, I
conceived the idea of settling all my property on her, and entreating
the Emperor to make me her guardian, with her own consent of course. He
agreed: he went further; he repealed, so far as it concerned her, the
law by which the daughters of Royalists cannot inherit, and made her
eligible to succeed to property, and placed her hand at my disposal.

"Such was the state of matters when I wrote to you. Since that I have
seen her, and spoken to her in confidence. She has consented to every
portion of the arrangement, save that which involves her marrying; but
some strange superstition being over her mind that her fate is to ruin
all with whom it is linked, that her name carries an evil destiny
with it, she refuses every offer of marriage, and will not yield to my
solicitation.

"I thought," said the general, as he leaned on his hand, and muttered
half aloud, "that I had conceived a plan which must bring happiness with
it. But, however, one part of my design is accomplished: she is my heir;
the daughter of my own loved Marie is the child of my adoption, and for
this I have reason to feel grateful. The cheerless feeling of a deathbed
where not one mourns for the dying haunts me no longer, and I feel not
as one deserted and alone. To-morrow I go to wish her adieu; and we are
to be at the Tuileries by noon. The Emperor hold