gh as like a Camisard, as if you were one of them."--"It is so
too," answered the son, "I am now going up into the mountains to them."

The father started up violently, he seized his son powerfully in his
arms, and thus carried him with supernatural strength into the saloon;
he placed him in an armchair, took the candle, looked at him
scrutinizingly and examined his whole figure, seized him by the breast
and cried out vehemently: "Wouldst thou act thus to me, unnatural
son?"--

"Yes," answered Edmond coldly, "I cannot do otherwise, I must!--leave
me! I thought, however, for once that I should win your approbation."

"As a rebel?" cried the Counsellor of Parliament in a vehement voice,
"as a murderer? that I must see die under martyrdom at the gallows? to
outrage my grey hair? one whom the father must deliver up into the
hands of the executioner?"

The son looked at him fixedly, but coldly and collectedly; the father
was deeply affected at it, but, at this ghastly look, had lost the
strength which supernatural terror had lent him for a moment, and
weeping aloud, he fell upon his son, who threw his arms round him,
embraced him, and by his caresses sought to console the afflicted old
man, "Oh, my son!" began the father, after a long pause, often
interrupted by sobs, "for many years I have not experienced these
tokens of affection in you, and now in this terrible moment, in which
my whole life vanishes as in a dream, in which you have so violently
torn my heart!--I cannot recover myself, I cannot question you, and
what shall I experience if my entreaties, my love, if nothing will
break your stubborn, enigmatical will? Oh, God of love! is there, in
all the feelings thou hast created, one more fervid than that of a
father to a child? and do we know the tremendous affliction we implore,
when we entreat heaven for children?"

They remained long clasped in each other's arms, at length Edmond said:
"Let me depart with your blessing, my father."

"That I cannot give to your dreadful designs," replied the Counsellor;
"It is so fearful, that I must still look upon you and myself as two
spectres."

Both were silent for a long time. At last the father said: "I will not
entreat of you to go to rest, for I greatly fear that you will not obey
me, it is fruitless also that I should seek for repose in sleep, for
slumber would flee from my shaken brain; what I may learn to-morrow, I
may as well hear to-day; if I can conceive, if I c