'What can the young scamp be after up there?' he would growl. 'Whole days pass without my catching more than a glimpse of him. He never seems to stir from the Abbé; they are always talking together in some corner or other. He shall be off to Paris at once. He's as strong as a Turk. All those ailments of his are mere shams, excuses to get himself petted and coddled. You needn't both of you look at me in that way; I don't mean to let the priest make a hypocrite of the boy.'
Then he began to keep a watch over his son, and when he thought that he was in Faujas's room he called for him angrily.
'I would rather he went to the bad!' he cried one day in a fit of rage.
'Oh, sir!' said Rose, 'it is abominable to say such things.'
'Well, indeed I would! And I'll put him in the way myself one of these days, if you irritate me much more with these parsons of yours!'
Serge naturally joined the Young Men's Club, though he went there but little, preferring the solitude of his own room. If it had not been for Abbé Faujas, whom he sometimes met there, he would probably never have set foot in the place. The Abbé taught him to play chess in the reading-room. Mouret, on learning that the lad met the priest at the café, swore that he would pack him off by the train on the following Monday. His luggage was indeed got ready, and quite seriously this time, but Serge, who had gone out to spend a last day in the open country, returned home drenched to the skin by a sudden downpour of rain. He was obliged to go to bed, shivering with fever. For three weeks he hung between life and death; and then his convalescence lasted for two long months. At the beginning of it he was so weak that he lay with his head on the pillow and his arms stretched over the sheets, as motionless as if he were simply a wax figure.
'It is your fault, sir!' cried the cook to Mouret. 'You will have it on your conscience if the boy dies.'
While his son continued in danger, Mouret wandered silently about the house, plunged in gloomy melancholy, his eyes red with crying. He seldom went upstairs, but paced up and down the passage to intercept the doctor as he went away. When he was told that Serge was at length out of danger, he glided quietly into the lad's room and offered his help. But Rose turned him away. They had no occasion for him, she said, and the boy was not yet strong enough to bear his roughness. He had much better go and attend to his business instead of getting in the way there. Mouret then remained in complete loneliness downstairs, more melancholy and unoccupied than ever. He felt no inclination for anything, said he. As he went along the passage, he often heard on the second floor the voice of Abbé Faujas, who spent whole afternoons by Serge's bedside, now that he was growing better.
'How is he to-day, Monsieur l'Abbé?' Mouret asked the priest timidly, as he met the latter going down into the garden.
'Oh, fairly well; but it will be a long convalescence, and very great care will be required.'