Hervé did not know, and was not of an age to measure the frightful depth of privation confessed. But the countess spoke in a sadder voice than usual, and, in response to her sigh, his childish lips parted in his own vague little sigh.
‘When I am grown up, I’ll take you to Paris, Countess,’ he said, coming near, and timidly fondling her hand.
‘Yes, Hervé,’ said the countess, and she stooped to kiss him.
‘M. le Comte is so old that he will probably be dead by that time, and then I can marry you, Countess, and you will live always at Saint-Laurent. You know it is bigger than Fresney.’
‘Yes, Hervé,’ said the countess musingly, thinking of her lost years and dead dreams, as she stared across the pleasant landscape.
Hervé regarded himself as an engaged gentleman from that day. The following Sunday he studied the epitaph on the tomb of the last Marquis, his grandfather, who had vanished into the darkness of an unexplored continent, with notebook and scientific intent, to leave his bones to whiten in the desert and the name of a brave man to adorn his country’s annals. Hervé was all excitement to learn from the countess the precise meaning of the words distinguished and explorer.
‘Countess,’ he hurried to ask, ‘what is it to be distinguished?’
‘It is greatly to do great things, Hervé.’
‘And what does explorer mean?’
‘To go far away into the unknown; to find out unvisited places, and teach others how much larger the world is than they imagine.’