"Because I never knew a mother's love or
care, because, when a baby, being sent from my home--and under that roof
I have never spent a night since--I fell and injured my foot, and the
woman in whose charge I had been put, being afraid to tell my parents of
my mishap, the hurt was allowed to go uncorrected until 'twas too late.
And so, being lame and unfit for a soldier's career, I was thrust into
the Church, _nolens volens_. Monsieur Calvert," he said, smiling
seriously, "when you hear Mr. Jefferson criticising the Bishop
of Autun--for I know he thinks but slightingly of the
ecclesiastic--recollect that 'twas the disappointed ambition and the
unrelenting commands of Charles Maurice Talleyrand's parents which made
him what he is! We are all like that," he went on, moodily. "Look at de
Ligne--he was married by his father at twenty to a young girl whom he
had never seen until a week before the wedding. And Madame de
Flahaut--at fifteen she was sacrificed to a man of fifty-five, who
scarcely notices her existence!" He glanced across the table and again
the power of love touched and softened his face for an instant.
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