There is many a father and many a child--perhaps more fathers than children--who will understand the delights of such an arrival, and that happy fact shows that literature has no need to depict it.

Perhaps all gentle and tender emotions are beyond the range of literature.
Not a word that could trouble the peace of the family was uttered on this joyful day.

Truce was tacitly established between father, mother, and child as to the so-called mysterious love which had paled Modeste's cheeks,--for this was the first day she had left her bed since Dumay's departure for Paris.

The colonel, with the charming delicacy of a true soldier, never left his wife's side nor released her hand; but he watched Modeste with delight, and was never weary of noting her refined, elegant, and poetic beauty.

Is it not by such seeming trifles that we recognize a man of feeling?
Modeste, who feared to interrupt the subdued joy of the husband and wife kept at a little distance, coming from time to time to kiss her father's forehead, and when she kissed it overmuch she seemed to mean that she was kissing it for two,--for Bettina and herself.
"Oh, my darling, I understand you," said the colonel, pressing her hand as she assailed him with kisses.
"Hush!" whispered the young girl, glancing at her mother.
Dumay's rather sly and pregnant silence made Modeste somewhat uneasy as to the upshot of his journey to Paris.