The infant must be fed and cared for--the unhappy
victim of other people's sins, whose life was now imperiled. A
dry nurse must be found at once, a nurse competent to take every
precaution and give the child every chance. This nurse must be
informed of the nature of the trouble--another matter which
required a great deal of anxious thought.
That evening came Madame Dupont, tormented by anxiety about the
child's welfare, and beseeching permission to help take care of
it. It was impossible to refuse such a request. Henriette could
not endure to see her, but the poor grandmother would come and
sit for hours in the nursery, watching the child and the nurse,
in silent agony.
This continued for days, while poor George wandered about at
home, suffering such torment of mind as can hardly be imagined.
Truly, in these days he paid for his sins; he paid a thousand-
fold in agonized and impotent regret. He looked back upon the
course of his life, and traced one by one the acts which had led
him and those he loved into this nightmare of torment. He would
have been willing to give his life if he could have undone those
acts. But avenging nature offered him no such easy deliverance
as that. We shudder as we read the grim words of the Jehovah of
the ancient Hebrews; and yet not all the learning of modern times
has availed to deliver us from the cruel decree, that the sins of
the fathers shall be visited upon the children.
George wrote notes to his wife, imploring her forgiveness.
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