"I understand you, Frederick," said Madame Bastien, smiling. "We are like the sleepers in the story of the 'Sleeping Beauty.' Our sleep, not so long as hers, has lasted five months. Bad dreams have disturbed it, but we awake as happy as we were before we went to sleep, do we not?"
"Happier, mother!" added Frederick, taking David's hand. "At our awakening, we found one friend more."
"You are right, my child," said the young mother, giving David a look beaming with rapture.
Then, seeing Frederick open the glass door which led to the grove, she added:
"What are you going to do? The rain has stopped, but the weather is still overcast and misty."
"The weather overcast and misty?" cried Frederick, going out of the house and looking at the century-old grove, with delight. "Oh, mother, can you say the weather is gloomy? Well, I must seem foolish to you, but our dear old grove looks to me as bright and smiling as it does under the sun of springtime."
The young man did appear to be born again; his features expressed such true, radiant happiness, that his mother could only look at him in silence. She saw him again as handsome, as sprightly, as joyous as formerly, although he was pale and thin, and yet every moment his cheeks would flush with some sweet emotion.
David, for whom every word of Frederick had a significance, enjoyed this scene intensely.
Suddenly the young man stopped a moment as if in a dream, before a group of wild thorns which grew on the edge of the grove; after some moments of reflection, he sought his mother's eyes, and said to her, no longer cheerful, but with a sweet melancholy:
"Mother, in a few words, I am going to tell you of my cure. So," added he turning to David, "you will see that I have profited from your teaching, my friend."