This is what I wrote beneath the dove: 

   “My dear uncle: 

“I left Paris with the intention of putting an end to the misunderstanding between us, which has lasted only too long, and which has given me more pain than you can guess.  I had no possible opportunity of speaking to you between five o’clock yesterday afternoon, when I arrived here, and ten o’clock this morning.  If I had been able to speak with you, you would not have refused to restore me to your affection, which, I confess, I ought to have respected more than I have.  You would have given your consent to my, union, on which depends your own happiness, my dear uncle, and that of your nephew,

“Fabien.”

“Rather too formal,” said Jeanne.  “Now, let me try.”

And the enchantress added, with ready pen: 

“It is I, Monsieur Mouillard, who am chiefly in need of forgiveness.  Mine is the greater fault by far.  You forbade Monsieur Fabien to love me, and I took no steps to prevent his doing so.  Even yesterday, when he came to your house, it was my doing.  I had assured him that your kind heart would not be proof against his loving confession.

“Was I really wrong in that?

“The words that you spoke just now have led me to hope that I was not.

“But if I was wrong, visit your anger on me alone.  Forgive your nephew, invite him to dinner instead of us, and let me depart, regretting only that I was not judged worthy of calling you uncle, which would have been so pleasant and easy a name to speak.

“Jeanne.”

I read the two letters over aloud.  Madeleine broke into sobs as she listened.

A smile flickered about the corners of Jeanne’s mouth.

We left the house, committing to Madeleine the task of choosing a favorable moment to hand M. Mouillard our joint entreaty.

And here I may as well confess that from the instant we got out of the house, all through breakfast at the hotel, and for a quarter of an hour after it, M. Charnot treated me, in his best style, to the very hottest “talking-to” that I had experienced since my earliest youth.  He ended with these words:  “If you have not made your peace with your uncle by nine o’clock this evening, Monsieur, I withdraw my consent, and we shall return to Paris.”

I strove in vain to shake his decision.  Jeanne made a little face at me, which warned me I was on the wrong track.

“Very well,” I said to her, “I leave the matter in your hands.”

“And I leave it in the hands of God,” she answered.  “Be a man.  If trouble awaits us, hope will at any rate steal us a happy hour or two.”

We were just then in front of the gardens of the Archbishop’s palace, so M. Charnot walked in.  The current of his reflections was soon changed by the freshness of the air, the groups of children playing around their mothers—­whom he studied ethnologically and with reference to the racial divisions of ancient Gaul—­by the beauty of the landscape—­its foreground of flowers, the Place St. Michel beyond, and further yet, above the barrack-roofs, the line of poplars lining the Auron.  He ceased to be a father-in-law, and became a tourist again.