He thought then, in the silly innocence of his youth, that art abridges all distance and that love effaces it.

Crueller nonsense never was uttered, my poor Fabien.

He soon found this; he tried to struggle against the parent's denial, against himself, against her, powerless in all alike, beaten at every point....

The end was--Do you care to learn the end?
The girl was carried off, struck down by a brief illness, soon dead; the man, hurled out of heaven, bruised, a fugitive also, is still so weak in presence of his sorrow that even after these long years he can not think of it without weeping." Lampron actually was weeping, he who was so seldom moved.

Down his brown beard, tinged already with gray, a tear was trickling.