“Are my father and mother really dead?” Péron asked, leaning his elbows on the table and gazing earnestly at his teacher.
Again the older face clouded and the kind eyes dwelt sadly on the rosy countenance of his interrogator.
“Both dead, Péron,” he answered softly. “Your mother when you were a baby, your father when you were three years old.”
“Did you know my mother, Père Antoine?” the child asked, a longing in his tone which may have caused the spasm of pain that passed over the priest.
“I knew her all her life,” he answered, “and I was with her when her spirit passed into Paradise; she was a very noble, gentle, Christian woman.”
He bent his head as he spoke and crossed himself, seeming for an instant to forget the child.
“Do I look like her?” the boy asked, with eager interest.
“You have her eyes, my child,” Père Antoine said tenderly, “but you grow daily more and more like your father.”
“Of what did he die?” Péron inquired; his mind seemed fully roused at last, and he was not inclined to spare.
The priest’s pale face grew even more grave than it had been; he laid his hand on the neglected book before his pupil.