It was near mid-day, and the advocate was engaged in his office, when the notary with whom Narcisse had been placed, suddenly entering, angrily demanded:
“Where is Narcisse, where is your son, sir? Here I am wanting his assistance, now, and he is missing, he is gone, no one knows where, nor where he has stowed those papers. Where is he, sir; where is the boy, I say; where is your son?”
The advocate looked up at this sudden disturbance, and, drawing a deep sigh, exclaimed with bitter emphasis:
“I would he were nowhere; that he were erased from the book of being; I would he were in heaven,—or else—in your office, Monsieur Veuillot. Is that a bad wish for either?”
“But he is not in my office,” said Veuillot.
“Nor in heaven neither, I fear,” rejoined the advocate.
“Where is he, then?” demanded the excited notary: “where is your son?”
“Such a son!” murmured the advocate, shrugging his shoulders. “Do you wish to be pleasant with me, Monsieur Veuillot? my evil genius call him. Son! I own I feed him, as I do other vermin that infest my house.”
“But where is he?” reiterated the notary with growing impatience, and seeming resolved to take no denial.
“Where is he?” echoed the advocate: “ask his mother; yes, sir, ask his dam. Oh, Monsieur Veuillot, is there not deep damnation in thus having an idiot for one's child? Here is your purgatory:—purgatory? no: for purgatory is a kind of half-way house to heaven, but this son of mine is to me a slippery stepping-stone to perdition. Sir, a child should be a cherub to lift its parents' spirit to the skies; but mine, oh!”—and a spasm of agony passed over the old man's visage, succeeded by a forced expression of calmness, as he continued: