"Truly, my child, you are no longer unhappy? All your sorrows are at an end? Your heart is free, contented, and joyous, as it used to be?"
"Monsieur—"
"Alas! my dear Frederick, the integrity of your heart will prevent your dissimulating a long time. Yes, although you have told your mother this morning she need have no fear, you are suffering this very hour, and perhaps more than in the past."
Frederick's features contracted. David's penetration crushed him, and, to avoid his glances, he looked downward.
David watched him closely, and continued:
"Even your silence, my dear child, proves to me that the task which I have undertaken, to render you as happy as you have been in the past, is still to be fulfilled. No doubt you are astonished that I have not tried to undertake it before. The reason for it is simple enough. I did not wish to venture without absolute certainty, and it was only yesterday that I arrived at a certainty of conviction concerning the malady which oppresses you, indeed, which is killing you. Now I know the cause."
Frederick trembled with dismay. This dismay, mingled with surprise, was painted in every look he cast upon David.
Then, regretting the betrayal of his feelings, the young man relapsed into gloomy silence.
"What I have told you, my child, astonishes you, and it ought to do so," replied David, "but," added he, in a tone of tender reproach, "why are you frightened at my penetration? When our friend, Doctor Dufour, healed you of a mortal ailment, was he not obliged, in order to combat your disease, to know the cause of it?"
Frederick said nothing.