“What is that?” asked the duke.
“The little nightingale is singing,” said Bertrand; “all is not lost, either for him or for us.”
“What do you call a nightingale?”
“That is the name we have given to monseigneur’s eldest son,” replied Bertrand.
“My son!” cried the old man; “have I a son?—a son to bear my name and to perpetuate it!”
He rose to his feet and began to walk about the room with steps in turn precipitate and slow. Then he made an imperious gesture, sending every one away from him except the priest.
The next morning the duke, leaning on the arm of his old retainer Bertrand, walked along the shore and among the rocks looking for the son he had so long hated. He saw him from afar in a recess of the granite rocks, lying carelessly extended in the sun, his head on a tuft of mossy grass, his feet gracefully drawn up beneath him. So lying, Etienne was like a swallow at rest. As soon as the tall old man appeared upon the beach, the sound of his steps mingling faintly with the voice of the waves, the young man turned his head, gave the cry of a startled bird, and disappeared as if into the rock itself, like a mouse darting so quickly into its hole that we doubt if we have even seen it.
“Hey! tete-Dieu! where has he hid himself?” cried the duke, reaching the rock beside which his son had been lying.
“He is there,” replied Bertrand, pointing to a narrow crevice, the edges of which had been polished smooth by the repeated assaults of the high tide.
“Etienne, my beloved son!” called the old man.