ars rolling down her
livid cheeks; for, as in former days, her eyes seemed to read the
future. "Did any one see him?" she asked of the two men.

At this instant the duke turned in his bed; they all trembled.

"Even my last joy is mingled with pain," murmured the duchess. "Take him
away! take him away!"

"Mother, I would rather see you a moment longer and die!" said the poor
lad, as he fainted by her side.

At a sign from the duchess, Bertrand took Etienne in his arms, and,
showing him for the last time to his mother, who kissed him with a last
look, he turned to carry him away, awaiting the final order of the dying
mother.

"Love him well!" she said to the physician and Bertrand; "he has no
protectors but you and Heaven."

Prompted by an instinct which never misleads a mother, she had felt the
pity of the old retainer for the eldest son of a house, for which his
veneration was only comparable to that of the Jews for their Holy City,
Jerusalem. As for Beauvouloir, the compact between himself and the
duchess had long been signed. The two servitors, deeply moved to
see their mistress forced to bequeath her noble child to none but
themselves, promised by a solemn gesture to be the providence of their
young master, and the mother had faith in that gesture.

The duchess died towards morning, mourned by the servants of the
household, who, for all comment, were heard to say beside her grave,
"She was a comely woman, sent from Paradise."

Etienne's sorrow was the most intense, the most lasting of sorrows, and
wholly silent. He wandered no more among his rocks; he felt no strength
to read or sing. He spent whole days crouched in the crevice of a rock,
caring nought for the inclemency of the weather, motionless, fastened to
the granite like the lichen that grew upon it; weeping seldom, lost in
one sole thought, immense, infinite as the ocean, and, like that ocean,
taking a thousand forms,--terrible, tempestuous, tender, calm. It
was more than sorrow; it was a new existence, an irrevocable destiny,
dooming this innocent creature to smile no more. There are pangs which,
like a drop of blood cast into flowing water, stain the whole current
instantly. The stream, renewed from its source, restores the purity of
its surface; but with Etienne the source itself was polluted, and each
new current brought its own gall.

Bertrand, in his old age, had retained the superintendence of the
stables, so as not to lose the habit of autho