"Who told you it would be a calamity?" retorted the youth.
Then turning abruptly away, he threw himself in an armchair, buried his face in his hands, and began to weep.
David's interest and curiosity were becoming more and more excited as he gazed with tender compassion at this unfortunate youth who seemed now as utterly crushed as he had been violently excited a short time before.
Suddenly the door opened, and Madame Bastien appeared, accompanied by the doctor.
"Where is my son?" asked Marie, glancing around the room, without even seeing David.
Madame Bastien could not see her son, the armchair in which he had thrown himself being concealed by the door that had been thrown open.
On seeing this beautiful young woman, who looked scarcely twenty, as we have said before, and whose features bore such a striking resemblance to Frederick's, David remained for a moment speechless with surprise and admiration, to which was added a profound interest when he learned that this was the mother of the youth for whom he already felt such a sincere compassion.
"Where is my son?" repeated Madame Bastien, advancing farther into the room and gazing around her with evident anxiety.
"The poor child is there," said David, in a low tone, at the same time motioning the anxious parent to look behind the door.
There was so much sympathy and kindness in David's face as well as in the tone in which he uttered the words, that though Marie had been astonished at first at the sight of the stranger, she said to him now as if she had known him always: