Chapter XXIV

The next morning at eight o'clock David awaited Madame Bastien in the library; she soon arrived there.

"Good morning, madame," said the preceptor to her. "Well, how now about Frederick?"

"Really, M. David, I do not know if I ought to rejoice or feel alarmed, for last night something very strange happened."

"What is that, madame?"

"Overcome by the emotions of yesterday evening, I slept one of those profound and heavy sleeps, the awakening from which often leaves you in a state of torpor for a few moments, and you are hardly conscious of what is passing around you. Suddenly it seemed to me that, half awake, I do not know why, I saw indistinctly by the light of the lamp Frederick leaning over my bed. He looked at me and was weeping as he said, 'Good-bye, mother, good-bye.' I wanted to speak to him and tried to do so, but the torpor against which I was struggling prevented me for some minutes. At last, after a desperate effort of my will, I woke, thoroughly. Frederick had disappeared. Still quite bewildered, I asked myself if this apparition was a dream or a reality. After waiting a while I went to my son's chamber. He was sleeping or pretended to be sleeping soundly. In my doubt, I did not dare awake him, for the poor child sleeps so little now!"

"And have you mentioned the incident of last night to him this morning?"

"Yes; but he appeared to be so sincerely surprised at what I told him, and declared so naturally that he had not left his chamber, that I do not know what to think. Have I been the dupe of an illusion? In my constant thought of Frederick, could I have taken a dream for reality? That is possible. Yet it seems to me I can still see my son's face bathed in tears and hear his distressed voice say to me, 'Good-bye, mother, good-bye!'--but pardon me, monsieur," said Madame Bastien, in an altered voice, holding her handkerchief to her eyes, "the very memory of this word 'good-bye' makes me wretched. Why these good-byes? Where does he wish to go? Dream or reality, this word distresses me, in spite of myself."

"Calm yourself, madame," said David, after having listened attentively to Madame Bastien. "I think, with you, that the apparition of Frederick has been an illusion produced by the continual tension of your mind. A thousand examples attest the possibility of such hallucinations."

"But this word--good-bye? Ah, I cannot tell you the anguish of heart it has caused me, the gloomy foreboding that it leaves with me still."

"Pardon me, madame, but do not attach any importance to a dream. I say dream, because it is difficult to admit the reality of this incident. Would Frederick come and weep by your pillow, and tell you good-bye during your sleep? Why do you think he wishes to leave you? Where could he go, now that our united watchfulness guards his every step?"

"That is true, M. David; yet--"

"Pray, take courage, madame, and, besides, you have just told me that, with the exception of this incident, you did not know whether to rejoice or feel alarm,--what is the cause of that?"

"This morning Frederick appeared calm, almost contented; he no longer had an air of dejection; he smiled, and embraced me as in the past, with tender effusion, imploring me to forgive him for the grief he had caused me, and promising to do everything in the world to make me forget it. So, taking your assuring words of yesterday, and this unexpected language of my son, and the kind of satisfaction that I read in his countenance, together, I ought to be happy--very happy."

"In fact, madame, why should you feel alarmed? This sudden change, which agrees with my hopes and plans so marvellously, ought, on the contrary--"

David was interrupted by the entrance of Frederick.

Pale, as usual, but his brow serene and lips smiling, he advanced to his preceptor with an air of frankness, and said, with a mingling of deference and cordiality:

"M. David, I wish to ask your indulgence and your forgiveness for a poor half-foolish boy, who, upon your arrival here, said such words to you as would have made him blush with shame if he had been aware of his thoughts and actions. Since that time this poor boy has become less rude, although he has remained unimpressed by the thousand evidences of kindness which you have given him. Of all these wrongs he repents. Will you grant me his pardon?"

"With all my heart, my brave boy," replied David, exchanging a look of surprise and happiness with Madame Bastien.

"Thank you, M. David," replied Frederick, pressing with emotion the hands of his preceptor in his own; "thank you for my mother and for myself."

"Ah, my child," said Madame Bastien, quickly, "I cannot tell you how happy you make me; our sad days are all at an end."

"Yes, mother; and I swear to you that it will not be I who will cause you sorrow."

"My dear Frederick," said David, smiling, "you know that I am not an ordinary preceptor, and that I love to take the fields for my study-hall; the weather is quite fine this morning, suppose we go out for a walk."

Frederick started imperceptibly.

Then he replied, immediately:

"I am at your service, M. David."

And turning to Madame Bastien, he said:

"Good-bye, mother!" and embraced the young woman.

It is impossible to describe what Madame Bastien felt when she heard the words, "Good-bye, mother."

These words which, the night before, whether illusion or reality, had filled her heart with such gloomy forebodings!

Marie thought, too, that her son, so to speak, made his kisses linger longer than was his habit, and that his hand that she held trembled in her own.

The emotion of the young mother was so intense that her face became deadly pale, and she exclaimed, in spite of herself, with an accent of fright:

"My God, Frederick, where are you going?"

David's eyes did not leave Madame Bastien a moment; he understood all, and said to her, with the most natural air in the world, at the same time placing intentional stress on certain words:

"Why, madame, Frederick has said _good-bye_ to you because he is going to take a walk with me."

"Of course, mother," added the young man, struck with the emotion of Madame Bastien, and secretly throwing on her an anxious and penetrating glance.

David surprised this glance, and he made an expressive sign to Madame Bastien, as much as to say:

"What have you to fear? Am I not there?"

"That is true; my fears are foolish," thought Madame Bastien. "Is not M. David with Frederick?"

All this passed in much less time than it takes to write it. The preceptor, taking Frederick by the arm, said to Madame Bastien, smiling:

"It is probable, madame, that our class in the open field will last until breakfast. You see that I am without pity for my pupil. I wish to bring him back to you weary with fatigue."

Madame Bastien opened the glass door which led into the study hall under the grove.

David and Frederick went out.

The youth evaded his mother's glance a second time.

For a long time the young woman remained sad and thoughtful on the threshold of the door, her eyes fixed on the road that her son and David had taken.

"I leave the choice of our walk to you, my dear child," said David to Frederick, when they had reached the edge of the forest.

"Oh, my God, M. David, it matters little to me," replied Frederick, honestly, "but since you leave the choice to me, I am going to take you to a part of the wood that you perhaps are not acquainted with,--look,--near that clump of fir-trees that you see down there on the top of the hill."

"True, my child, I have never been on that side of the forest," said David, walking with his pupil toward the designated spot.

More and more surprised at the strange coincidence between his hopes and the sudden alteration in the son of Madame Bastien, David observed him attentively and remarked that almost always he held his head down, although, as they crossed the forest, he had two or three times turned involuntarily to look at his mother, whom he could see through the vista of tall trees, standing in the door.

After examining him for some minutes, David discovered that this calmness of Frederick was feigned. Once out of the presence of his mother, the young man not only did not control himself long at a time, but became anxious and abstracted, his features contracting sometimes in pain, and again assuming an expression of painful serenity, if such a thing can be said, which alarmed David no little.

Not to frighten Madame Bastien, he had tried to persuade her that the apparition of Frederick, on the preceding night, was only a dream. But David did not so believe; he regarded Frederick's farewells to his sleeping mother a reality. This circumstance, with what he had just observed in the lad, made him fear that his pupil's sudden change was a piece of acting, and might conceal some sinister motive.

"But, fortunately," thought David, "I am here with him."

When they had left the forest, Frederick took a road covered with turf, across the fallow ground, which, leaving the wood around Pont Brillant to the right, conducted him to the crest of a little hill where stood five or six isolated fir-trees.

"My dear child," said David, at the end of a few minutes, "I am so pleased with the words of affectionate confidence you addressed to me this morning, because they could not have come at a better time."

"Why is that, M. David?"

"Because, secure in this confidence and affection that I have tried to inspire in you up to this time, I will now be able to undertake a task which at first seemed very difficult."

"And what is this task?"

"To make you as happy as you were formerly."

"I!" exclaimed Frederick, involuntarily.

"Yes."

"But," replied Frederick, with self-repression, "I am no longer unhappy, I said so this morning to my mother; the malady that I suffered from, and which has embittered my feelings, has disappeared almost entirely. Besides, M. Dufour has told my mother that it is at an end."

"Truly, my child, you are no longer unhappy? All your sorrows are at an end? Your heart is free, contented, and joyous, as it used to be?"

"Monsieur--"

"Alas! my dear Frederick, the integrity of your heart will prevent your dissimulating a long time. Yes, although you have told your mother this morning she need have no fear, you are suffering this very hour, and perhaps more than in the past."

Frederick's features contracted. David's penetration crushed him, and, to avoid his glances, he looked downward.

David watched him closely, and continued:

"Even your silence, my dear child, proves to me that the task which I have undertaken, to render you as happy as you have been in the past, is still to be fulfilled. No doubt you are astonished that I have not tried to undertake it before. The reason for it is simple enough. I did not wish to venture without absolute certainty, and it was only yesterday that I arrived at a certainty of conviction concerning the malady which oppresses you, indeed, which is killing you. Now I know the cause."

Frederick trembled with dismay. This dismay, mingled with surprise, was painted in every look he cast upon David.

Then, regretting the betrayal of his feelings, the young man relapsed into gloomy silence.

"What I have told you, my child, astonishes you, and it ought to do so," replied David, "but," added he, in a tone of tender reproach, "why are you frightened at my penetration? When our friend, Doctor Dufour, healed you of a mortal ailment, was he not obliged, in order to combat your disease, to know the cause of it?"

Frederick said nothing.

During several minutes, as the two were approaching the hill upon which stood the lonely fir-trees, the son of Madame Bastien had from time to time glanced slyly and uneasily at his companion. He seemed to fear the miscarriage of some project which he had been contemplating since he had left his mother's house.

Just as they finished talking, David observed that the road bordering on the crest of the hill changed into a narrow path which skirted the clump of fir-trees, and that Frederick, in an attitude of apparent deference, had stopped a moment, as if he did not wish to step in advance of his preceptor. David, attaching no importance to so natural and trivial an incident, passed on before the youth.

At the end of a few moments, not hearing Frederick's step behind him, he turned around.

The son of Madame Bastien had disappeared.