You shall take to wife the daughter of a prince.

Would you have me die of grief?
Come! come to me! or here I kneel until I see you.
Your old father prays you, he humbles himself before his child as before God himself." The hated son paid no heed to this language bristling with social ideas and vanities he did not comprehend; his soul remained under the impressions of unconquerable terror.

He was silent, suffering great agony.

Towards evening the old seigneur, after exhausting all formulas of language, all resources of entreaty, all repentant promises, was overcome by a sort of religious contrition.

He knelt down upon the sand and made a vow:-- "I swear to build a chapel to Saint-Jean and Saint-Etienne, the patrons of my wife and son, and to found one hundred masses in honor of the Virgin, if God and the saints will restore to me the affection of my son, the Duc de Nivron, here present." He remained on his knees in deep humility with clasped hands, praying.
Finding that his son, the hope of his name, still did not come to him, great tears rose in his eyes, dry so long, and rolled down his withered cheeks.