“Read it, Maitre Corbineau,” said the old man, holding out the missive to his confessor.

These four personages formed a tableau full of instruction upon human life.  The man-at-arms, the priest, and the physician, all three standing before their master, who was seated in his arm-chair, were casting pallid glances about them, each presenting one of those ideas which end by possessing the whole man on the verge of the tomb.  Strongly illumined by a last ray of the setting sun, these silent men composed a picture of aged melancholy fertile in contrasts.  The sombre and solemn chamber, where nothing had been changed in twenty-five years, made a frame for this poetic canvas, full of extinguished passions, saddened by death, tinctured by religion.

“The Marechal d’Ancre has been killed on the Pont du Louvre by order of the king, and—­O God!”

“Go on!” cried the duke.

“Monsieur le Duc de Nivron—­”

“Well?”

“Is dead!”

The duke dropped his head upon his breast with a great sigh, but was silent.  At those words, at that sigh, the three old men looked at each other.  It seemed to them as though the illustrious and opulent house of Herouville was disappearing before their eyes like a sinking ship.

“The Master above,” said the duke, casting a terrible glance at the heavens, “is ungrateful to me.  He forgets the great deeds I have performed for his holy cause.”

“God has avenged himself!” said the priest, in a solemn voice.

“Put that man in the dungeon!” cried the duke.

“You can silence me far more easily than you can your conscience.”

The duke sank back in thought.

“My house to perish!  My name to be extinct!  I will marry!  I will have a son!” he said, after a long pause.

Though the expression of despair on the duke’s face was truly awful, the bonesetter could not repress a smile.  At that instant a song, fresh as the evening breeze, pure as the sky, equable as the color of the ocean, rose above the murmur of the waves, to cast its charm over Nature herself.  The melancholy of that voice, the melody of its tones shed, as it were, a perfume rising to the soul; its harmony rose like a vapor filling the air; it poured a balm on sorrows, or rather it consoled them by expressing them.  The voice mingled with the gurgle of the waves so perfectly that it seemed to rise from the bosom of the waters.  That song was sweeter to the ears of those old men than the tenderest word of love on the lips of a young girl; it brought religious hope into their souls like a voice from heaven.

“What is that?” asked the duke.

“The little nightingale is singing,” said Bertrand; “all is not lost, either for him or for us.”

“What do you call a nightingale?”

“That is the name we have given to monseigneur’s eldest son,” replied Bertrand.

“My son!” cried the old man; “have I a son?—­a son to bear my name and to perpetuate it!”