“It can’t be helped. It’s his own fault. I told him particularly not to try and see me.... Tell him I’m busy, that ... I’ll write to him.”
Hector bowed and went out.
The old man remained for a few moments with his eyes closed. He seemed asleep, except that his lips, half-hidden by his beard, could be seen moving. At last he raised his eyelids, held out his hand to Lafcadio, and in a voice that was changed and softened, a voice that seemed broken with fatigue:
“Give me your hand, child,” he said. “You must leave me now.”
“I must make a confession,” said Lafcadio, hesitating. “In order to make myself presentable to come and see you, I exhausted my supplies. If you don’t help me, I shall have very little dinner to-night and none at all to-morrow ... unless your son, M. le Vicomte....”
“In the meantime you can have this,” said the Count, taking five hundred francs out of a drawer. “Well, what are you waiting for?”
“I should like to ask you, too ... whether I mayn’t hope to see you again?”
“Upon my word, I’ll admit, it would give me pleasure. But the reverend persons who are in charge of my soul, keep me in a frame of mind in which pleasure passes as a secondary consideration. As for my blessing, I’ll give it to you at once.” And the old man opened his arms to receive him. But Lafcadio, instead of throwing himself into them, knelt down before him and laid his head, sobbing, on the Count’s knees; touched in a moment and all subdued to tenderness by the embrace, he felt his heart and all its fierce resolves melt within him.
“My child, my child,” stammered the old man, “I have delayed too long.”
When Lafcadio got up his face was wet with tears.