He was simply a hero of romance. “His life is a romance—a great, a real romance,” cried Pélagie one day on returning from a visit paid to an old relative whom Pierre Seron was attending and from whom she had heard it all!
Her grandmother, touched by her grandchild’s emotion, listened to the story enthusiastically told by Pélagie, who was already in love with Pierre Seron’s sad adventure as much as, and perhaps more than, with himself.
He was the second son of a father who hated him from the day of his birth. Doctor Seron loved only his elder son, his pride, he who should have been an “only child.”
He continually said this to his timid, submissive wife, who hardly dared to protect the ill-used, beaten younger son, who was made to live with the servants.
Poor little fellow! except for a rare kiss, a furtive caress from his mother, he was a victim to his family’s dislike.
One day, when very ill with the croup, his father wished to send him to the hospital, fearing contagion for the elder brother. But his mother on this occasion resisted. She shut herself up with him in his little room, took care of him, watched over him, and by her energy and devotion saved him from death. But she had worn out her own strength. She seemed half-stunned, and the child suffered so much during his convalescence that he was almost in as much danger as while ill.
When he was nine years old, a servant accused him of a theft which he had committed himself, and he was driven from his home one autumn night, possessing nothing but the poor clothes he wore and a few crowns, painfully economised by his mother, who slipped them into his hand without even kissing him.
He lay in front of the door when it was closed upon him, hoping that some one passing would crush him. He cried, he supplicated. The neighbours gathered around him, pitying him, and saying loudly that it was abominable, that the law should protect the unhappy little child, but no one dared to take him to his home.
As soon as Pierre found himself alone again, abandoned by all, he looked for a last time at what he called “the great, wicked and shining eyes” of the lighted windows of the house.
“That,” said Pélagie to her grandmother, “was the very phrase Pierre Seron used in relating his story, and the poor boy started off, not knowing whither he went.”