He was passionately fond of the child.

When she tried to speak, or when she fixed her beautiful blue eyes upon some object with that serious, reflective look which seems the dawn of thought, and which she ended with a laugh, he would stay by her side for hours, seeking, with Jordy's help, to understand the reasons (which most people call caprices) underlying the phenomena of this delicious phase of life, when childhood is both flower and fruit, a confused intelligence, a perpetual movement, a powerful desire.
Ursula's beauty and gentleness made her so dear to the doctor that he would have liked to change the laws of nature in her behalf.

He declared to old Jordy that his teeth ached when Ursula was cutting hers.

When old men love children there is no limit to their passion--they worship them.
For these little beings they silence their own manias or recall a whole past in their service.

Experience, patience, sympathy, the acquisitions of life, treasures laboriously amassed, all are spent upon that young life in which they live again; their intelligence does actually take the place of motherhood.