Then began their quiet home-life, and the brief stir of change subsided to the calm of a higher level.
The week after their return Elena was to go out. A dozen little children had been sent out to different houses, and she would gather and take them to their new homes. A day or two later, twenty young men, Ion among them, would go.
CHAPTER XXIV.
It was the day before that fixed for the departure of the students, and all the town was gathered in the Square, now changed to an amphitheatre, and roofed with canvas. Professor Pearlstein was to give the young men a last charge, repeating admonitions which they had already heard, indeed, but which in these circumstances would make a deeper impression.
The speaker began gently:—
“When a father sends his child on a long journey in foreign lands, he first provides for his sustenance, furnishes him with suitable clothing, and tries to secure friends for him in those far-off countries. He tells him all that he knows, or can learn concerning them, warns him against such dangers as he can foresee.
“Having done all this, his anxious love is still unsatisfied. He follows to the threshold of that parting, and beyond, trying to discover some new service that he can render, looks again at the traveler’s equipments, repeats once more his admonitions, gives lingeringly his last blessing, his last caress; till, no longer able to postpone the dreaded moment, he loosens his hold upon the loved one, strains his eyes for the last glance, then sits down to weep.
“But even then, when the first irrepressible burst of grief is over, he forgets himself anew, and sends out his imagination in search of the wanderer—in what vigils! with what fears, what prayers for his well-being!
“While the child, amused and distracted by the novelties of this foreign life, forgets sometimes the parent he has left, those sad eyes at home gaze down the empty road by which he disappeared, or weep with longing to see him once more. Would the wanderer’s song and laugh displease him if he knew? Oh, no! He would rejoice in that happiness. The only inconsolable anguish that he could feel would be in knowing that the virtue with which he had labored to fortify that child’s soul was cast aside and forgotten.
“But I did not mean to make you weep. I wish you to think, resolve, remember, and persevere.