"Mother," said Michel at last, "I do not answer you because I cannot answer as I wish."
"How do you mean, as you wish?"
"Listen to me, mother," said the young man, with a firmness of which at any other time she would have thought him, and perhaps he might have thought himself, incapable.
"You don't refuse to go, I hope?"
"I don't refuse to go," said Michel, "but I put conditions to my going."
"Conditions where it concerns your life, your safety? Conditions before you consent to relieve your mother's agony?"
"Mother," said Michel, "since we last saw each other I have suffered much, and consequently I have learned much. I have learned, above all, that there are moments which decide the whole future happiness or misery of our lives. I am now in one of those moments, mother."
"And you mean to decide for my misery?"
"No; I shall speak to you as a man, that is all. Do not be surprised at that; I was thrown, a child, into the midst of these events, and I have come out of them a man. I know the duties I owe my mother; those duties are respect, tenderness, gratitude,--and those duties I will never evade. But in passing from youth to manhood, mother, horizons open and broaden the farther we go; there we find duties, succeeding those of youth, not exclusively to our family, but also to society. When a man reaches that stage in his life, though he still loves his mother, he must inevitably love another woman, who will be to him the mother of his children."
"Ah!" exclaimed the baroness, starting back from her son with an impulse that was stronger than her will.