Page:The fortunes of Fifi (IA fortunesoffifi00seawiala).pdf/130

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parish priest, far away from him, and could hear nothing from him. Then in the disorders that followed the French Revolution one lost sight of all that one had ever known and loved. I caused diligent inquiry to be made—I was a bishop then, and could have helped Barnabas' son—but I could not find a trace of him. He, like Barnabas, had married and died young, leaving an only child—yourself—and, I knew it not! The great whirlpool of the Revolution seemed to swallow up everything. But on the night of my arrival in Paris, as we passed slowly along that narrow street, and I saw your face peering into my carriage, it was as if my Barnabas had come back to me. You are more like him than I believed any child could be like its father. So, when I heard, through the agency of the Emperor, that a young relative of mine, by name Chiaramonti, was in Paris, earning her living, I felt sure it was the young girl who looked into my carriage that night."

"But I am not earning my living now, Holy Father."

"So I hear. You have had strange good fortune—good fortune in having done honest work in your poverty, and good fortune in being under