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.