I went up to him for an embrace, but he
gently pushed me away.
"'You are a man now, _my child_,' he said. 'What I have just done was a
very proper and simple thing, for which there is no need to thank me.
If I have any claim to your gratitude, Raphael,' he went on, in a kind
but dignified way, 'it is because I have preserved your youth from the
evils that destroy young men in Paris. We will be two friends
henceforth. In a year's time you will be a doctor of law. Not without
some hardship and privations you have acquired the sound knowledge and
the love of, and application to, work that is indispensable to public
men. You must learn to know me, Raphael. I do not want to make either
an advocate or a notary of you, but a statesman, who shall be the
pride of our poor house. . . . Good-night,' he added.
"From that day my father took me fully into confidence. I was an only
son; and ten years before, I had lost my mother. In time past my
father, the head of a historic family remembered even now in Auvergne,
had come to Paris to fight against his evil star, dissatisfied at the
prospect of tilling the soil, with his useless sword by his side. He
was endowed with the shrewdness that gives the men of the south of
France a certain ascendency when energy goes with it.
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