“It is the best way,” said Gabriel, firmly.
“I will use no harshness, inflict no punishment,—unless, indeed, amply merited by stubborn disobedience or wilful deceit. But if I meet with these, better rot on a dunghill than come with me! I ask implicit confidence in all my suggestions, prompt submission to all my requests. Grant me but these, and I promise to consult your fortune as my own, to gratify your tastes as far as my means will allow, to grudge not your pleasures, and when the age for ambition comes, to aid your rise if I rise myself,—nay, if well contented with you, to remove the blot from your birth, by acknowledging and adopting you formally as my son.”
“Agreed! and I thank you,” said Gabriel. “And Lucretia is going? Oh, I so long to see her!”
“See her—not yet; but next week.”
“Do not fear that I should let out about the letter. I should betray myself if I did,” said the boy, bluntly betraying his guess at his father’s delay.
The evil scholar smiled.
“You will do well to keep it secret for your own sake; for mine, I should not fear. Gabriel, go back now to your master,—you do right, like the rats, to run from the falling house. Next week I will send for you, Gabriel!”
Not, however, back to the studio went the boy. He sauntered leisurely through the gayest streets, eyed the shops and the equipages, the fair women and the well-dressed men,—eyed with envy and longings and visions of pomps and vanities to come; then, when the day began to close, he sought out a young painter, the wildest and maddest of the crew to whom his uncle had presented their future comrade and rival, and went with this youth, at half-price, to the theatre, not to gaze on the actors or study the play, but to stroll in the saloon. A supper in the Finish completed the void in his pockets, and concluded his day’s rank experience of life. By the gray dawn he stole back to his bed, and as he laid himself down, he thought with avid pleasure of Paris, its gay gardens and brilliant shops and crowded streets; he thought, too, of his father’s calm confidence of success, of the triumph that already had attended his wiles,—a confidence and a triumph which, exciting his reverence and rousing his emulation, had decided his resolution. He thought, too, of Lucretia with something of affection, recalled her praises and bribes, her frequent mediation with his father, and felt that they should have need of each other. Oh, no, he never would tell her of the snare laid at Guy’s Oak,—never, not even if incensed with his father. An instinct told him that that offence could never be forgiven, and that, henceforth, Lucretia’s was a destiny bound up in his own. He thought, too, of Dalibard’s warning and threat. But with fear itself came a strange excitement of pleasure,—to grapple, if necessary, he a mere child, with such a man! His heart swelled at the thought. So at last he fell asleep, and dreamed that he saw his mother’s trunkless face dripping gore and frowning on him,—dreamed that he heard her say: “Goest thou to the scene of my execution only to fawn upon my murderer?” Then a nightmare of horrors, of scaffolds and executioners and grinning mobs and agonized faces, came on him,—dark, confused, and indistinct. And he woke, with his hair standing on end, and beard below, in the rising sun, the merry song of the poor canary,—trill-lill-lill, trill-trill-lill-lill-la! Did he feel glad that his cruel hand had been stayed?