ound the cathedral, past the Ursulines,
under the frowning walls of the citadel, followed his shadow in the
moonlight and went before it. Those grim words had severed the last
delicate thread which bound father and son. To have humiliated
himself! To have left open in his armor a place for such a thrust! He
had gone with charity and forgiveness, to be repulsed! He had held
forth his hand, to find the other's withdrawn!

"Tell Monsieur le Comte for me that I am sleeping and may not be
disturbed!"

Mockery! And yet this same father had taken up the sword to drive it
through a man who had laughed. Only God knew; for neither the son
understood the father nor the father the son. Well, so be it. He was
now without weight upon his shoulders; he was conscience free; he had
paid his obligations, obligations far beyond his allotted part. It was
inevitable that their paths should separate. There had been too many
words; there was still too much pride.

"Tell Monsieur le Comte for me that I am sleeping and may not be
disturbed!"

He had stood there in the corridor and writhed as this blade entered
his soul and turned and turned. Rage and chagrin had choked him,
leaving him utterly speechless. So be it. Forevermore it was to be
the house divided. . . . It was after two o'clock when the Chevalier
went back to his bed. The poet was in slumber, and his face looked
careworn in repose.

"Poor lad! He is not happy, either. Only the clod knows content as a
recompense for his poverty. Good night, Madame; to-morrow, to-morrow,
and we shall see!"

And the morrow came, the rarest gem in all the diadem of days. There
was a ripple on the water; a cloudless sky; fields of corn waving their
tasseled heads and the broad leaf of the tobacco plant trembling,
trembling.

"What!" cried Victor in surprise; "you have a new feather in your hat?"

"Faith, lad," said the Chevalier, "the old plume was a shabby one. But
I have not destroyed it; too many fond remembrances cling to it. How
often have I doffed that plume at court, in the gardens, on the
balconies and on the king's highways! And who would suspect, to look
at it now, that it had ever dusted the mosaics at the Vatican? And
there have been times when I flung it on the green behind the
Luxembourg, my doublet beside it."

"Ah, yes; we used to have an occasional affair." And Victor nodded as
one who knew the phrase. "But a new feather here? Who will notice it?
Pr