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Rh of his Catholic party, that I have ever been acquainted with."

"Heavens!" exclaimed Edmond, "you are then, venerable man, the Edmond Watelet, of whom I have so often heard the Counsellor of Parliament speak, as the favourite friend of his youth?"

A long pause ensued.—"It is indeed so," said the aged priest wiping away his tears, "the young enthusiastic Beauvais must now be an old man; I too though am become old! Aye, truly, there is a period which our heart refuses to believe, it is that alone which exalts the life of each one of us to a strange fiction, to a wonderful tale. He is still living then? ah, my dear Chevalier, you are yourself very like him. That is the spell, which so inseparably bound me to you."

Edmond talked of his father, but notwithstanding his deep emotion, he felt it was impossible to discover to him at that moment, that he was his son. After a time during which the old man recovered