There is many a father and many a child--perhaps more fathers
than children--who will understand the delights of such an arrival,
and that happy fact shows that literature has no need to depict it.
Perhaps all gentle and tender emotions are beyond the range of
literature.
Not a word that could trouble the peace of the family was uttered on
this joyful day. Truce was tacitly established between father, mother,
and child as to the so-called mysterious love which had paled
Modeste's cheeks,--for this was the first day she had left her bed
since Dumay's departure for Paris. The colonel, with the charming
delicacy of a true soldier, never left his wife's side nor released
her hand; but he watched Modeste with delight, and was never weary of
noting her refined, elegant, and poetic beauty. Is it not by such
seeming trifles that we recognize a man of feeling? Modeste, who
feared to interrupt the subdued joy of the husband and wife kept at a
little distance, coming from time to time to kiss her father's
forehead, and when she kissed it overmuch she seemed to mean that she
was kissing it for two,--for Bettina and herself.
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