"Well, mother, devoured by envy, and more than that, pursued by remorse, which always awakened at the sound of your voice, I wanted to kill myself. I went out with M. David, I escaped from him. He succeeded in finding my tracks. I had run to the Loire, and when he arrived—"
"Ah! unhappy child!" cried Marie, "but for him you would have drowned!"
"Yes, and when I was about to drown I called you, mother, as one calls for help. He heard my cries, and threw himself in the Loire, and—"
Frederick was interrupted by Marguerite.
The old servant this time did not present herself smiling and triumphant, but timid and alarmed, as she whispered to her mistress, as if she were announcing some fatal news:
"Madame, madame, monsieur has come!"
CHAPTER XXXIII.
THESE words of Marguerite, "Monsieur has come!" announcing the arrival of Jacques Bastien at the very moment in which Marie realised that she owed to David not only the moral restoration but the life of her son, so appalled the young woman that she sat mute and motionless, as if struck by an unexpected blow; for the incidents of the morning had banished from her mind every thought of her husband's letter. Frederick, on his part, felt a sad surprise. Thanks to his mother's reticence he was ignorant of much of his father's unkindness and injustice, but certain domestic scenes in which the natural brutality of Jacques Bastien's character had been manifested, and the unwise severity with which he exercised his paternal authority in his rare visits to the farm, united in rendering the relations of father and son very strained.
David also saw the arrival of M. Bastien with profound apprehension; although prepared to make all possible concessions to this man, even to the point of utter self-effacement, it pained him to think that the continuity of his relations with Frederick and his mother depended absolutely on the caprice of Jacques Bastien.
Marguerite was so little in advance of her master that David, Marie, and her son were still under the effects of their astonishment and painful reflections, when Jacques Bastien entered the library, accompanied by his companion, Bridou, the bailiff of Pont Brillant.