But these were transient moments of a better light. As meteors, darting across the sky, illumine for a few seconds the dark vault of heaven, and in the sudden exit of their brilliant flash seem to leave greater darkness in the night, thus the impulses of grace shot across the soul of Cassier; he struggled in the grasp of an unseen power, but suddenly lapsed into the awful callousness which characterizes the relapses of confirmed guilt; he pretended to smile at his weakness, and found a sorry relief in cursing and scoffing at everything the virtuous love.
Yet he offered immense rewards for information that would bring him in presence of the boy whose form he loved, but whose virtue he despised. Like the pagan persecutors of old, he vainly hoped, by fear or the tinsel of gold, to win back to the world and sin the magnanimous youth who had broken through the stronger argument of a mother's tears. Messengers were dispatched in every direction; the police scoured the roads for miles outside the city; friends and acquaintances were warned not to harbor the truant.
A week passed, and no cheerful tidings came to lessen the gloom of bereavement. That Providence which made Louis a vessel of election had covered him with its protective shield, and bore him like a vessel under propitious winds to the port of his destination.
In all the soft tenderness of girlhood the two sisters lamented their absconding brother. They, too, had been unkind to him. The sweet, patient smile that ever met their taunts, the mild reproof when they concealed his beads or prayer-book, his willingness to oblige on all occasions, were remembered with tears. When sitting by the mother's bed, the conversation invariably turned on Louis. In cruel fancy they deepened the real sorrow of separation by casting imaginary misfortunes on the track of the absent boy. One would sigh with the ominous PERHAPS.
"Poor Louis is now hungry!"
"Perhaps he is now lying sick and footsore on the side of some highway, without a friend, without money."
"Perhaps he has fallen in with robbers and is stripped of the few articles of dress he took with him."
"Perhaps he is now sorry for leaving us," sighed the tender-hearted Aloysia, "and would give the world to kiss again his poor sick mamma!"
But futile tears flowed with each surmise. No welcome messenger returned to bring tidings of the missing youth.
'Tis thus we love virtue; we sigh over departed worth when its brilliancy has faded from our sight.