r did not hear his mother's last words; he had slipped away to bed
the instant that he got the order.

Those who remember their youth will not be surprised to learn that
after a day so filled with events and emotions, Oscar, in spite of the
enormity of his offences, slept the sleep of the just. The next day he
did not find the world so changed as he thought it; he was surprised
to be very hungry,--he who the night before had regarded himself as
unworthy to live. He had only suffered mentally. At his age mental
impressions succeed each other so rapidly that the last weakens its
predecessor, however deeply the first may have been cut in. For this
reason corporal punishment, though philanthropists are deeply opposed
to it in these days, becomes necessary in certain cases for certain
children. It is, moreover, the most natural form of retribution, for
Nature herself employs it; she uses pain to impress a lasting memory of
her precepts. If to the shame of the preceding evening, unhappily too
transient, the steward had joined some personal chastisement, perhaps
the lesson might have been complete. The discernment with which such
punishment needs to be administered is the greatest argument against it.
Nature is never mistaken; but the teacher is, and frequently.

Madame Clapart took pains to send her husband out, so that she might be
alone with her son the next morning. She was in a state to excite
pity. Her eyes, worn with tears; her face, weary with the fatigue of
a sleepless night; her feeble voice,--in short, everything about her
proved an excess of suffering she could not have borne a second time,
and appealed to sympathy.

When Oscar entered the room she signed to him to sit down beside her,
and reminded him in a gentle but grieved voice of the benefits they had
so constantly received from the steward of Presles. She told him that
they had lived, especially for the last six years, on the delicate
charity of Monsieur Moreau; and that Monsieur Clapart's salary, also
the "demi-bourse," or scholarship, by which he (Oscar) had obtained an
education, was due to the Comte de Serizy. Most of this would now cease.
Monsieur Clapart, she said, had no claim to a pension,--his period of
service not being long enough to obtain one. On the day when he was no
longer able to keep his place, what would become of them?

"For myself," she said, "by nursing the sick, or living as a housekeeper
in some great family, I could support myself