his turn, took the old lady by the shoulders, forced her into an arm-chair, stooped over and, in a very calm voice, said:
"Rot!"
She began to cry and, clasping her hands together, implored him:
"I beseech you, leave us in peace. We were so happy! I thought that you had forgotten us and I blessed Heaven every time a day had passed. Why, yes . . . I love you just the same. But, Geneviève . . . you see, there's nothing that I wouldn't do for that child. She has taken your place in my heart."
"So I perceive," said he, laughing. "You would send me to the devil with pleasure. Come, enough of this nonsense! I have no time to waste. I must talk to Geneviève."
"You're going to talk to her?"
"Well, is that a crime?"
"And what have you to tell her?"
"A secret . . . a very grave secret . . . and a very touching one. . . ."
The old lady took fright:
"And one that will cause her sorrow, perhaps? Oh, I fear everything, I fear everything, where she's concerned! . . ."
"She is coming," he said.
"No, not yet."
"Yes, yes, I hear her. . . . Wipe your eyes and be sensible."
"Listen," said she, eagerly, "listen. I don't know what you are going to say, what secret you mean to reveal to this child whom you don't know. But I, who do know her, tell you this: Geneviève has a very plucky, very spirited, but very sensitive nature. Be careful how you choose your words. . . . You might wound feelings . . . the existence of which you cannot even suspect. . . ."
"Lord bless me! And why not?"
"Because she belongs to another race than you, to a different world. . . . I mean, a different moral world. . . . There are things which you are forbidden to understand nowadays. Between you and her, the obstacle is insurmountable. . . . Geneviève has the most unblemished and upright conscience . . . and you . . ."
"And I?"
"And you are not an honest man!"
Geneviève entered, bright and charming:
"All my babies have gone to bed; I have ten minutes to spare. . . . Why, grandmother, what's the matter? You look quite upset. . . . Is it still that business with the . . ."
"No, mademoiselle," said Sernine, "I believe I have had the good fortune to reassure your grandmother. Only, we were talking of you, of your childhood; and that is a subject, it seems, which your grandmother cannot touch upon without emotion."
"Of my childhood?" said Geneviève, reddening. "Oh, grandmother!"
"Don't scold her, mademoiselle. The conversation turned in that direction by accident. It so happens that I have often passed through the little village where you were brought up."
"Aspremont?"
"Yes, Aspremont, near Nice. You used to live in a new house, white all over. . . ."
"Yes," she said, "white all over, with a touch of blue paint round the windows. . . . I was only seven years old when I left Aspremont; but I remember the least things of that period. And I have not forgotten the glare of the sun on the white front of the house, nor the shade of the eucalyptus-tree at the bottom of the garden."
"At the bottom of the garden, mademoiselle, was a field of olive-trees; and under one of those olive-trees stood a table at which your mother used to work on hot days. . . ."
"That's true, that's true," she said, quite excitedly, "I used to play by her side. . . ."
"And it was there," said he, "that I saw your mother several times. . . . I recognized her image the moment I set eyes on you . . . but it was a brighter, happier image."
"Yes, my poor mother was not happy. My father died on the very day of my birth, and nothing was ever able to console her. She used to cry a great deal. I still possess a little handkerchief with which I used to dry her tears at that time."
"A little handkerchief with a pink pattern."
"What!" she exclaimed, seized with surprise. "You know . . ."
"I was there one day when you were comforting her. . . . And you comforted her so prettily that the scene remained impressed on my memory."
She gave him a penetrating glance and murmured, almost to herself:
"Yes, yes. . . . I seem to . . . The expression of your eyes . . . and then the sound of your voice. . . ."
She lowered her eyelids for a moment and reflected as if she were vainly trying to bring back a recollection that escaped her. And she continued:
"Then you knew her?"
"I had some friends living near Aspremont and used to meet her at their house. The last time I saw her, she seemed to me sadder still . . . paler . . . and, when I came back again . . ."
"It was all over, was it not?" said Geneviève. "Yes, she went very quickly . . . in a few weeks . . . and I was left alone with neighbors who sat up with her . . . and one morning they took her away. . . . And, on the evening of that day, some one came, while I was asleep, and lifted me up and wrapped me in blankets. . . ."
"A man?" asked the prince.
"Yes, a man. He talked to me, quite low, very gently . . . his voice did me good . . . and, as he carried me down the road and also in the carriage, during the night, he rocked me in his arms and told me stories . . . in the same voice . . . in the same voice . . ."
She broke off gradually and looked at him again, more sharply than before and with a more obvious effort to seize the fleeting impression that passed over her at moments. He asked:
"And then? Where did he take you?"
"I can't recollect clearly . . . it is just as though I had slept for several days. . . . I can remember nothing before the little town of Montégut, in the Vendée, where I spent the second half of my childhood, with Father and Mother Izereau, a worthy couple who reared me and brought me up and whose love and devotion I shall never forget."
"And did they die, too?"
"Yes," she said, "of an epidemic of typhoid fever in the district . . . but I did not know that until later. . . . As soon as they fell ill, I was carried off as on the first occasion and under the same conditions, at night, by some one who also wrapped me up in blankets. . . . Only, I was bigger, I struggled, I tried to call out . . . and he had to close my mouth with a silk handkerchief."
"How old were you then?"
"Fourteen . . . it was four years ago."
"Then you were able to see what the man was like?"
"No, he hid his face better and he did not speak a single word to me. . . . Nevertheless, I have always believed him to be the same one . . . for I remember the same solicitude, the same attentive,
