grace and
goodness: 'I have been threatened with ruin, and it might perhaps come.
What I now confide to you will at least be safe--safe--for those who
suffer. Give much--give freely--make as many happy hearts as you can. My
happiness shall have a royal inauguration!!' I do not know whether I ever
told you, my friend, that, after those fatal events, seeing Dagobert and
his wife reduced to misery, poor 'Mother Bunch' hardly able to earn a
wretched subsistence, Agricola soon to become a father, and myself
deprived of my curacy, and suspended by my bishop, for having given
religious consolations to a Protestant, and offered up prayers at the
tomb of an unfortunate suicide--I considered myself justified in
employing a small portion of the sum intrusted to me by Mdlle. de
Cardoville in the purchase of this farm in Dagobert's name.

"Yes, my friend, such is the origin of my fortune. The farmer to whom
these few acres formerly belonged, gave us the rudiments of our
agricultural education, and common sense, and the study of a few good
practical books, completed it. From an excellent workman, Agricola has
become an equally excellent husbandman; I have tried to imitate him, and
have put my hand also to the plough there is no derogation in it, for the
labor which provides food for man is thrice hallowed, and it is truly to
serve and glorify God, to cultivate and enrich the earth He has created.
Dagobert, when his first grief was a little appeased, seemed to gather
new vigor from this healthy life of the fields; and, during his exile in
Siberia, he had already learned to till the ground. Finally, my dear
adopted mother and sister, and Agricola's good wife, have divided between
them the household cares; and God has blessed this little colony of
people, who, alas! have been sorely tried by misfortune, and who now only
ask of toil and solitude, a quite, laborious, innocent life, and oblivion
of great sorrows. Sometimes, in our winter evenings, you have been able
to appreciate the delicate and charming mind of the gentle 'Mother
Bunch,' the rare poetical imagination of Agricola, the tenderness of his
mother, the good sense of his father, the exquisite natural grace of
Angela. Tell me, my friend, was it possible to unite more elements of
domestic happiness? What long evenings have we passed round the fire of
crackling wood, reading, or commenting on a few immortal works, which
always warm the heart, and enlarge the soul! What sweet talk