t, alarmed him for his mother. "What are you doing?" asked
he.

"What were you doing?" replied she.

"Oh, my mother!" exclaimed Albert, so overcome he could scarcely speak;
"it is not the same with you and me--you cannot have made the same
resolution I have, for I have come to warn you that I bid adieu to your
house, and--and to you."

"I also," replied Mercedes, "am going, and I acknowledge I had depended
on your accompanying me; have I deceived myself?"

"Mother," said Albert with firmness. "I cannot make you share the fate
I have planned for myself. I must live henceforth without rank and
fortune, and to begin this hard apprenticeship I must borrow from a
friend the loaf I shall eat until I have earned one. So, my dear mother,
I am going at once to ask Franz to lend me the small sum I shall require
to supply my present wants."

"You, my poor child, suffer poverty and hunger? Oh, do not say so; it
will break my resolutions."

"But not mine, mother," replied Albert. "I am young and strong; I
believe I am courageous, and since yesterday I have learned the power
of will. Alas, my dear mother, some have suffered so much, and yet
live, and have raised a new fortune on the ruin of all the promises of
happiness which heaven had made them--on the fragments of all the hope
which God had given them! I have seen that, mother; I know that from the
gulf in which their enemies have plunged them they have risen with so
much vigor and glory that in their turn they have ruled their former
conquerors, and have punished them. No, mother; from this moment I have
done with the past, and accept nothing from it--not even a name, because
you can understand that your son cannot bear the name of a man who ought
to blush for it before another."

"Albert, my child," said Mercedes, "if I had a stronger heart, that is
the counsel I would have given you; your conscience has spoken when my
voice became too weak; listen to its dictates. You had friends, Albert;
break off their acquaintance. But do not despair; you have life before
you, my dear Albert, for you are yet scarcely twenty-two years old; and
as a pure heart like yours wants a spotless name, take my father's--it
was Herrera. I am sure, my dear Albert, whatever may be your career,
you will soon render that name illustrious. Then, my son, return to the
world still more brilliant because of your former sorrows; and if I am
wrong, still let me cherish these hopes, for I have no future to