Tete-Dieu! all things bow to me as the reeds to the wind.

I give you unlimited power.

I bow to you myself as the god of the family." The father carried his son into the lordly chamber where the mother's sad existence had been spent.

Etienne turned away and leaned against the window from which his mother was wont to make him signals announcing the departure of his persecutor, who now, without his knowing why, had become his slave, like those gigantic genii which the power of a fairy places at the order of a young prince.

That fairy was Feudality.
Beholding once more the melancholy room where his eyes were accustomed to contemplate the ocean, tears came into those eyes; recollections of his long misery, mingled with melodious memories of the pleasures he had had in the only love that was granted to him, maternal love, all rushed together upon his heart and developed there, like a poem at once terrible and delicious.