"If you regard my son and myself as your opponents, you may rest easy, monsieur; we renounce your benefactions, without a shadow of hesitation."
"Ah! yes, my benefactions! they are a burden to you, they make you blush!"
"As we did not know that they put fetters on a person who is dear to us, they did not make us blush; indeed—I may say, monsieur," added Madame Thierry, with a mighty effort due to her devotion to her son, "your name would have been blessed in this house, if we had been certain that we owed that generosity to your solicitude for our welfare. Whatever its cause, and brief as its duration has been, we have been happy, amid all our troubles and anxieties, to live in this house once more and to enjoy to the full our most cherished memories. You bid us leave them, and we obey; but it remains for me to thank you——"
"You, madame?" said Antoine, gazing fixedly at her.
"Yes, for me to thank you for the two months you have allowed me to pass here. The idea of never seeing the house again was very painful to me; it will be less so henceforth, and I shall look back to this brief stay here as to a last pleasant dream which will count for much in my life and for which I shall be indebted to you."
Madame Thierry spoke in a sweet voice and with a refined accent which had always made her very fascinating. In his moments of spleen Monsieur Antoine sourly called her the fine talker. He felt none the less the ascendancy of that still fresh voice, which caressed his ear with mild and almost respectful words. He had but little comprehension of sentimental refinement, but it seemed to him that he had found the submissive instinct of which he was so greedy.
"Come, Madame André," he said, with the surly manner he always assumed when his ill humor was beginning to retreat, "you know how to say all you want to say; but, in reality, you can't endure me, you may as well admit it!"
"I do not hate any one, monsieur; but you force me to confess that I am afraid of you."
Nothing could have been more adroit than that reply. To inspire fear was in Monsieur Antoine's opinion the noblest attribute of power. He softened as if by a miracle, and said in an almost good-humored tone:
"Why in the devil are you afraid of me?"