“I rallied from my torpor.  I built a roomy cottage in a mountain dell near the chapel of Santa Maria, furnished it comfortably, and moved into it, and engaged an Italian nurse and housekeeper, for I had resolved to pass my life among the simple, kindly people who were the only friends misfortune had left me.

“Another trial awaited me—­a light one, however, in comparison to those I had suffered and outlived.

“This trial came when my son was but little over a year old, and I had been about six months in the “Hermitage,” as I called my new home.

“One morning I received a file of English papers for the month of May just preceding.  In the papers of the first week in May I saw announced the birth of your son, called the infant Marquis of Arondelle, and the heir.  I read of the great rejoicings in all your various seats throughout the United Kingdom, and the congratulations of royalty itself, upon this auspicious event.  I clasped my disinherited son to my bosom and wept the very bitterest tears I had ever shed in my life.

“Later on I read in the papers for the last of May a graphic account of the grand pageantry of the christening, which took place at St. Peter’s, Euston Square, where an archbishop performed the sacred rites and a royal duke stood sponsor, and of the great feastings and rejoicings in hall and hut on every estate of yours throughout the kingdom.  I thought of my disowned boy’s humble baptism in the village church by the country priest, where two kind-hearted peasants stood sponsors for him, and I wept myself nearly blind that night.

“The next day I went to the little church and told the good father there all about it.  He understood and sympathized with me, counselled and comforted me as usual.

“He admonished me that to escape from the wounds of the world, I must not only forsake the world, as I had done, but forget the world as I had not done; to forget the world I must cease to search and inquire into its sayings and doings; and he advised me to write and stop all my newspapers, which only brought me news to disturb my peace of mind.

“I followed the direction of my wise guide.  I wrote immediately and stopped all my newspapers.

“After that I devoted myself to the nurture of my child, to the care of my little household, to the relief of my poorer neighbors, and to the performance of my religious duties; and time brought me resignation and cheerfullness.

“From that day to this, Duke of Hereward, I have never once seen your name printed or written, and never once heard it breathed.  You may have passed away from earth, for aught I know to the contrary; though I hope and believe that you have not.

“My boy throve finely.  The good priest of Santa Maria took charge of his education for the first twelve years of the pupil’s life, made of him, even at that early age, a good Latin and Greek scholar, and a fair mathematician; and would have prepared him to enter one of the German Universities, had not the summons come that cut short the good father’s work on earth, and carried him to his eternal home.