.

A FATHER STEPS IN.
The Comte de La Bastie was at this moment overwhelmed with the sorrows which lay in wait for him as their prey.

He had learned from his daughter's letter of Bettina's death and of his wife's infirmity, and Dumay related to him, when they met, his terrible perplexity as to Modeste's love affairs.
"Leave me to myself," he said to his faithful friend.
As the lieutenant closed the door, the unhappy father threw himself on a sofa, with his head in his hands, weeping those slow, scanty tears which suffuse the eyes of a man of sixty, but do not fall,--tears soon dried, yet quick to start again,--the last dews of the human autumn.
"To have children, to have a wife, to adore them--what is it but to have many hearts and bare them to a dagger ?" he cried, springing up with the bound of a tiger and walking up and down the room.

"To be a father is to give one's self over, bound hand and foot to sorrow.

If I meet that D'Estourny I will kill him.