in that familiar house, as one might be in a place he had never seen before, made uneasy by the hours and days stretching before me to be filled. Ah! too many things now separated me from my old father, from my distant past—too many things which had built up another soul within me! Here I was no longer anything more than an up-rooted tree, brought back to its native soil when the torn roots have long been dead. And I understood that verity, glimpses of which I had caught in those too rare hours when I had leisure for dreaming: that the only important thing in this life of ours—so difficult to live—is to maintain intact the sacred bonds that hold together the members of one family. We sacrifice too much to ambition; we should live for our own people, in the place where we were born, near the blessed earth in which our ancestors are sleeping, and which will one day receive us. And I pictured to myself our life as it might have been, all united in this dear house, among these old belongings, about this patriarch, whom we would have wrapped in filial love. But I had turned aside to follow other paths, toward another destiny. My children would do as I had done. Thus actual life will have it, destroyer that it is of legitimate affection, enemy of all that is enduring,—a vortex that draws us in, and passes on. Doubtless, the reflection of these sombre thoughts was shown in my face, for my father,
