"Shall I send for the peasant's child?"
He closed his eyes and did not reply. When, after long weeks of illness, he was restored to health, he belonged to the Marquise. He never spoke of his eldest child, and adored Jean.
Then came the emigration. Monsieur de Fongereues, friend of Condé and of Polignac, yielded to his wife's entreaties and joined the Prince de Condé at Worms, where he was making an appeal to foreign powers against France. Although yielding to the wishes of the Marquise, De Fongereues was fully aware that it was a base act to desert his country, and excite against her the hatred of her most violent enemies. Young Simon, the son of the peasant, could not join in this parricidal act, although the Marquis sent Pierre Labarre, who was even then in his service, to his son, then fifteen years of age, to sound his views. If the youth would enter the army of Condé, the Marquis assured him a brilliant future. If he remained in France, however, he could no longer rely on his father, who, however, sent him a large sum of money. The youth refused the money, and replied:
"Say to my father that I love him, and that if ever he requires a devoted heart and a courageous arm that he may summon me to his side; but now, if I am to choose between poverty in my own country and wealth in a foreign land, I remain here!"
"It was Simonne's soul that spoke through his lips!" murmured the Marquis, when Pierre repeated the message sent by the young man.
The father and son did not meet after 1790. We will now return to Fribourg, to that room where Pierre Labarre had just told the Marquis that Simon was living.
Twenty-five years had elapsed—twenty-five years of anguish and sorrow for the Marquis. He had seen France fighting with heroic energy against all Europe. He had heard the enthusiastic shouts of 1792, and then the dull groans of the people crushed under the heel of the conqueror. And while his country bled and fought, the Marquis blushed with shame in London, Berlin and Vienna when his French ears heard the maledictions of the conquered.
As soon as his son, the Vicomte Jean, reached the age of twenty, he had become one of the most active agents of the coalition, and, as if to indicate his hatred of France, married a German.
From that time the Marquis heard nothing but abuse of France, nothing but exultation when her sons fell in Spain or in Russia. The old man's heart was sore within him, but it was then too late for him to make a stand, and he was obliged to live on amid this hatred.