"Wait you here in Paris," I cried to the steward, and came of a sudden to an awkward pause. "You brought money with you?" I asked.
"I have an order upon Mr. Waters the banker," he replied.
"Good," I said, my spirits rising with my voice. "Get it cashed—now, at once, and bring the money back to me. But be quick, be quick. For I have business in Lorraine."
"In Lorraine?" exclaimed the steward, and his face flashed to an excitement equal with my own.
"In Lorraine," I repeated, "and at Bar-le-Duc."
He waited for no further explanation, but made his reverence to the rector, a low bow to me, and departed on his errand. I began to pace impatiently about the room, already looking for his return, even as I heard him pass beneath the window.
"Was I not right, my son?" asked the rector. "You walk, you speak, like a man refreshed. And yet—and yet——"
He came over to me and laid a hand upon my shoulder, while a great gravity overspread his face, and somehow at the touch of his hand, at the mere sight of his face, my overweening confidence burst like a bubble. For looking through my eyes he seemed to search my soul, and in his eyes I seemed to see, as in a mirror, the naked truth of all the folly that he noted there.
"These are the last words," he went on, "which I shall speak to the pupil, and I would have you bear them as the crest and motto of your life. I would have you beware of a feverish zeal. To each man I do solemnly believe there comes one hour of greatness, and only one. It is not the hour of supreme happiness, or of a soaring fortune, as worldlings choose to think, but the hour when God tries him upon His touchstone. And for that hour each man must watch if he would not fail. Indeed, it brings the test which proves—nay, makes—him man, and in God's image, too, or leaves him lower than the brutes; for he has failed. Therefore watch! No man knoweth the hour of God's coming. Therefore watch! But how shall he watch"—and his voice to my hearing had in it some element of prophecy—"how shall he watch who swings ever from elation to despair, and knows no resting-place between them?"
He spoke very quietly, and so left me alone. I do not know that I am inclined now to set great store upon the words. They seem almost to present some such theory as children and men over-occupied with book-learning are wont to fondle. But after he had left me alone, I sat with his discourse overlaying me like an appalling shadow. The sunlight in the court without lost its brightness; the very room darkened within. I saw my whole life before me, a procession of innumerable hours. Hooded and cloaked, they passed me with silent feet. I sought to distinguish between them. I chose at random from amongst them. "This," I cried, in a veritable fear—"this is the hour;" and even as I spoke, one that had passed threw back the hood and turned on me a sorrowing face. So would the hour come, and so unready should I be to challenge it! My fear swelled to a panic; it bore me company all that day as I made my purchases in the streets, as I took leave of my companions, as I passed out of the Porte St. Antoine. It was with me, too, in the quiet evening long after the spires of Paris had vanished behind me, when I was riding with my steward at my back across that open country of windmills and poplar trees on the highroad to Lorraine.