Cesar, who wrote a superb hand, spent his evenings in copying for Derville and other lawyers.  On Sundays, justified by ecclesiastical permission, he worked like a Negro.

“No,” he said, “Monsieur Derville is waiting for a guardianship account.”

“Your wife and daughter ought to have some reward.  You will meet none but our particular friends,—­the Abbe Loraux, the Ragons, Popinot, and his uncle.  Besides, I wish it.”

Cesar and his wife, carried along by the whirlwind of business, had never revisited Sceaux, though from time to time each longed to see once more the tree under which the head-clerk of “The Queen of Roses” had fainted with joy.  During the trip, which Cesar made in a hackney-coach with his wife and daughter, and Popinot who escorted them, Constance cast many meaning glances at her husband without bringing to his lips a single smile.  She whispered a few words in his ear; for all answer he shook his head.  The soft signs of her tenderness, ever-present yet at the moment forced, instead of brightening Cesar’s face made it more sombre, and brought the long-repressed tears into his eyes.  Poor man! he had gone over this road twenty years before, young, prosperous, full of hope, the lover of a girl as beautiful as their own Cesarine; he was dreaming then of happiness.  To-day, in the coach before him, sat his noble child pale and worn by vigils, and his brave wife, whose only beauty now was that of cities through whose streets have flowed the lava waves of a volcano.  Love alone remained to him!  Cesar’s sadness smothered the joy that welled up in the hearts of Cesarine and Anselme, who embodied to his eyes the charming scene of other days.

“Be happy, my children! you have earned the right,” said the poor father in heart-rending tones.  “You may love without one bitter thought.”

As he said these words he took his wife’s hands and kissed them with a sacred and admiring effect which touched Constance more than the brightest gaiety.  When they reached the house where Pillerault, the Ragons, the Abbe Loraux, and Popinot the judge were waiting for them, these five choice people assumed an air and manner and speech which put Cesar at his ease; for all were deeply moved to see him still on the morrow of his great disaster.

“Go and take a walk in the Aulnay woods,” said Pillerault, putting Cesar’s hand into that of Constance; “go with Anselme and Cesarine! but come back by four o’clock.”

“Poor souls, we should be a restraint upon them,” said Madame Ragon, touched by the deep grief of her debtor.  “He will be very happy presently.”

“It is repentance without sin,” said the Abbe Loraux.

“He could rise to greatness only through adversity,” said the judge.

To forget is the great secret of strong, creative natures,—­to forget, in the way of Nature herself, who knows no past, who begins afresh, at every hour, the mysteries of her untiring travail.