While listening to his daughter, Beauvouloir examined her with sagacious eyes; those eyes seemed almost stupid from the force of his rushing thoughts, as the water of a cascade seems motionless.  He raised the veil of flesh which hid the secret springs by which the soul reacts upon the body; he studied the diverse symptoms which his long experience had noted in persons committed to his care, and he compared them with those contained in this frail body, the bones of which frightened him by their delicacy, as the milk-white skin alarmed him by its want of substance.  He tried to bring the teachings of his science to bear upon the future of that angelic child, and he was dizzy in so doing, as though he stood upon the verge of an abyss; the too vibrant voice, the too slender bosom of the young girl filled him with dread, and he questioned himself after questioning her.

“You suffer here!” he cried at last, driven by a last thought which summed up his whole meditation.

She bent her head gently.

“By God’s grace!” said the old man, with a sigh, “I will take you to the Chateau d’Herouville, and there you shall take sea-baths to strengthen you.”

“Is that true, father?  You are not laughing at your little Gabrielle?  I have so longed to see the castle, and the men-at-arms, and the captains of monseigneur.”

“Yes, my daughter, you shall really go there.  Your nurse and Jean shall accompany you.”

“Soon?”

“To-morrow,” said the old man, hurrying into the garden to hide his agitation from his mother and his child.

“God is my witness,” he cried to himself, “that no ambitious thought impels me.  My daughter to save, poor little Etienne to make happy, —­those are my only motives.”

If he thus interrogated himself it was because, in the depths of his consciousness, he felt an inextinguishable satisfaction in knowing that the success of his project would make Gabrielle some day the Duchesse d’Herouville.  There is always a man in a father.  He walked about a long time, and when he came in to supper he took delight for the rest of the evening in watching his daughter in the midst of the soft brown poesy with which he had surrounded her; and when, before she went to bed, they all—­the grandmother, the nurse, the doctor, and Gabrielle—­knelt together to say their evening prayer, he added the words,—­

“Let us pray to God to bless my enterprise.”

The eyes of the grandmother, who knew his intentions, were moistened with what tears remained to her.  Gabrielle’s face was flushed with happiness.  The father trembled, so much did he fear some catastrophe.

“After all,” his mother said to him, “fear not, my son.  The duke would never kill his grandchild.”

“No,” he replied, “but he might compel her to marry some brute of a baron, and that would kill her.”