The Seven Cardinal Sins: Envy and Indolence Part 9

"Who told you it would be a calamity?" retorted the youth.

Then turning abruptly away, he threw himself in an armchair, buried his face in his hands, and began to weep.

David's interest and curiosity were becoming more and more excited as he gazed with tender compa.s.sion at this unfortunate youth who seemed now as utterly crushed as he had been violently excited a short time before.

Suddenly the door opened, and Madame Bastien appeared, accompanied by the doctor.

"Where is my son?" asked Marie, glancing around the room, without even seeing David.

Madame Bastien could not see her son, the armchair in which he had thrown himself being concealed by the door that had been thrown open.

On seeing this beautiful young woman, who looked scarcely twenty, as we have said before, and whose features bore such a striking resemblance to Frederick's, David remained for a moment speechless with surprise and admiration, to which was added a profound interest when he learned that this was the mother of the youth for whom he already felt such a sincere compa.s.sion.

"Where is my son?" repeated Madame Bastien, advancing farther into the room and gazing around her with evident anxiety.

"The poor child is there," said David, in a low tone, at the same time motioning the anxious parent to look behind the door.

There was so much sympathy and kindness in David's face as well as in the tone in which he uttered the words, that though Marie had been astonished at first at the sight of the stranger, she said to him now as if she had known him always:

"Good Heavens! what is the matter? Has anything happened to him?"

"Ah, mother," suddenly replied the youth, who had taken advantage of the moment during which he had been hidden from Madame Bastien's sight to wipe away his tears. Then bowing with a distrait air to Doctor Dufour, whom he had always treated with such affectionate cordiality before, Frederick approached his mother and said:

"Come, mother, let us go."

"Frederick," exclaimed Marie, seizing her son's hands and anxiously scrutinising his features, "Frederick, you have been weeping."

"No," he responded, stamping his foot impatiently, and roughly disengaging his hands from his mother's grasp. "Come, let us go, I say."

"But he has been weeping, has he not, monsieur?" again turning to David with a half-questioning, half-frightened air.

"Well, yes, I have been weeping," replied Frederick, with a sarcastic smile, "weeping for grat.i.tude, for this gentleman here," pointing to David, "prevented me from falling out of the window. Now, mother, you know all. Come, let us go."

And Frederick turned abruptly toward the door.

Doctor Dufour, no less surprised and grieved than Madame Bastien, turned to David.

"My friend, what does this mean?" he asked.

"Monsieur," added Marie, also turning to the doctor's friend, embarra.s.sed and distressed at the poor opinion this stranger must have formed of Frederick, "I have no idea what my son means. I do not know what has happened, but I must beg you, monsieur, to excuse him."

"It is I who should ask to be excused, madame," replied David, with a kindly smile. "Seeing your son leaning imprudently far out of the window just now, I made the mistake of treating him like a schoolboy. He is proud of his sixteen summers, as he should be, for at that age,"

continued David, with gentle gravity, "one is almost a man, and must fully understand and appreciate all the charm and happiness of a mother's love."

"Monsieur!" exclaimed Frederick, impetuously, his nostrils quivering with anger, and a deep flush suffusing his pale face, "I need no lesson from you."

And turning on his heel, he left the room.

"Frederick!" cried Marie, reproachfully, but her son was gone; so turning her lovely face, down which tears were now streaming, to David, she said, with touching artlessness:

"Ah, monsieur, I must again ask your pardon. Your kind words lead me to hope that you will understand my regret, and that you will not blame my unhappy son too severely."

"He is evidently suffering, and should be pitied and soothed," replied David, sympathisingly. "When I first saw him I was startled by his pallor and the drawn appearance of his features. But he has gone, madame, and I would advise you not to leave him by himself."

"Come, madame, come at once," said Doctor Dufour, offering his arm to Madame Bastien, and the latter, divided between the surprise the stranger's kindness excited and the intense anxiety she felt in regard to her son, left the room precipitately in company with the doctor to overtake Frederick.

On being left alone, David walked to the window. A moment afterward, he saw Madame Bastien come out of the house with her handkerchief to her eyes and leaning on the doctor, and step into the shabby little vehicle in which Frederick had already seated himself amid the laughs and sneers of the crowd that lingered on the mall, and that had witnessed the old work-horse's misadventure.

"That old nag won't forget the lesson the young marquis gave him for some time, I'll be bound," remarked one lounger.

"Wasn't he a sight when he planted himself with that old rattletrap of a chaise right in the midst of our young marquis's fine carriages?"

remarked another.

"Yes, the old plug won't forget St. Hubert's Day in a hurry, I guess,"

added a third.

"Nor shall I forget it," muttered Frederick, trembling with rage.

At that moment the doctor a.s.sisted Madame Bastien into the vehicle, and Frederick, exasperated by the coa.r.s.e jests he had just overheard, struck the innocent cause of all this commotion a furious blow, and the poor old horse, unused to such treatment, started off almost on a run.

In vain Madame Bastien implored her son to moderate the animal's pace.

Several persons narrowly escaped being run over. A child who was slow in getting out of the way received a cut of the whip from Frederick, and whirling rapidly around the corner at the end of the mall, the chaise disappeared from sight amid the jeers and execrations of the angry crowd.

CHAPTER IX.

After he had escorted Marie to her carriage Doctor Dufour reentered the house and found his friend still standing thoughtfully by the window.

On hearing the door open and close, David awoke from his reverie and turned toward the doctor, who, thinking of the painful scene which they had just witnessed, exclaimed, referring of course to Madame Bastien:

"Poor woman! poor woman!"

"The young woman does indeed seem greatly to be pitied," remarked David.

"Far more than you think, for she lives only for her son; so you can judge how she must suffer."

"Her son? Why, I thought he was her brother. She doesn't look a day over twenty. She must have married very young."

"At the age of fifteen."

"And how beautiful she is!" remarked Henri, after a moment's silence.

"Her loveliness, too, is of an unusual type,--the at once virginal and maternal beauty that gives Raphael's virgin mothers such a divine character."

"Virgin mothers! The words are peculiarly appropriate in this connection. I will tell you Madame Bastien's story. I feel sure that it will interest you."