Ah! if only I could have been slain myself, instead of your unhappy son; it would have been better and happier for me." He bowed with grave dignity to the prince, who courteously returned his salute, exchanged a long look, eloquent of passionate love and heart-breaking regret, with Isabelle, and went sadly down the grand staircase, followed by his companions--not however without glancing back more than once at the sweet girl he was leaving--who to save herself from falling, leaned heavily against the railing of the landing, sobbing as if her heart would break, and pressing a handkerchief to her streaming eyes.

And, so strange a thing is the human heart, the Baron de Sigognac departed much comforted by the bitter grief and tears of her whom he so devotedly loved and worshipped.

He and his friends went on foot to the little wood where they had left their horses tied to the trees, found them undisturbed, mounted and returned to Paris.
"What do you think, my lord, of all these wonderful events ?" said the tyrant, after a long silence, to de Sigognac, beside whom he was riding.

"It all ends up like a regular tragi-comedy.

Who would ever have dreamed, in the midst of the melee, of the sudden entrance upon the scene of the grand old princely father, preceded by torches, and coming to put a little wholesome restraint on the too atrociously outrageous pranks of his dissolute young son?
And then the recognition of Isabelle as his daughter, by means of the ring with a peculiar device of his own engraved upon it; haven't you seen exactly the same sort of thing on the stage?
But, after all, it is not so surprising perhaps as it seems at the first glance--since the theatre is only a copy of real life.
Therefore, real life should resemble it, just as the original does the portrait, eh?
I have always heard that our sweet little actress was of noble birth.