"At last--I have found you!"

"Adeline!" exclaimed the Baron in bewilderment, and he locked the shop
door. "Joseph, go out the back way," he added to the stove-fitter.

"My dear!" she said, forgetting everything in her excessive joy, "you
can come home to us all; we are rich. Your son draws a hundred and sixty
thousand francs a year! Your pension is released; there are fifteen
thousand francs of arrears you can get on showing that you are alive.
Valerie is dead, and left you three hundred thousand francs.

"Your name is quite forgotten by this time; you may reappear in the
world, and you will find a fortune awaiting you at your son's house.
Come; our happiness will be complete. For nearly three years I have
been seeking you, and I felt so sure of finding you that a room is ready
waiting for you. Oh! come away from this, come away from the dreadful
state I see you in!"

"I am very willing," said the bewildered Baron, "but can I take the
girl?"

"Hector, give her up! Do that much for your Adeline, who has never
before asked you to make the smallest sacrifice. I promise you I will
give the child a marriage portion; I will see that she marries well, and
has some education. Let it be said of one of the women who have given
you happiness that she too is happy; and do not relapse into vice, into
the mire."

"So it was you," said the Baron, with a smile, "who wanted to see me
married?--Wait a few minutes," he added; "I will go upstairs and dress;
I have some decent clothes in a trunk."

Adeline, left alone, and looking round the squalid shop, melted into
tears.

"He has been living here, and we rolling in wealth!" said she to
herself. "Poor man, he has indeed been punished--he who was elegance
itself."

The stove-fitter returned to make his bow to his benefactress, and she
desired him to fetch a coach. When he came back, she begged him to give
little Atala Judici a home, and to take her away at once.

"And tell her that if she will place herself under the guidance of
Monsieur the Cure of the Madeleine, on the day when she attends her
first Communion I will give her thirty thousand francs and find her a
good husband, some worthy young man."

"My eldest son, then madame! He is two-and-twenty, and he worships the
child."

The Baron now came down; there were tears in his eyes.

"You are forcing me to desert the only creature who had ever begun to
love me at all as you do!" said he in a whisper to his wife. "She is