“Why do you cry, my darling boy?” said he; “you think me very ill? But don’t be alarmed; God is all powerful, and may save me yet. Take courage; it will all pass away. I shall be cured before long; and, when the weather gets fine, I will take walks in the Luxembourg gardens with you and Cressida. Do not cry like that, my child, you will make yourself ill.”
My little friend’s emotion was uncontrollable, and he was led out of the room by his mother, while the poor father sank back upon his pillow exhausted with the few words he had spoken.
The next morning, when Jacques came into Maurice’s room to wake him, the first words spoken by the little boy were to inquire after his father. Jacques replied that the doctor, who had been there late the evening before, had declared that his patient was better, and had told Mrs. de Roisel that he had great hope now of his recovery. Maurice felt happier than he had done since he was present at the consultation of the doctors the morning before. Then, as he looked round the room, he saw Cressida’s empty stable, and occupied as his thoughts were by his father, he still felt inclined to shed a tear at the sight.
“Do you know, Jacques,” he said, “I had a dream about Fritz in the night. I thought that I saw him, and I was afraid he would ask me what I had done with Cressida; but instead of that, he took me in his arms, and embraced me, and called me his dear good boy.”
The hope expressed by the doctor that Mr. de Roisel would yet recover proved to be well founded, and when the month of April came on he had regained his strength sufficiently to bear a journey to Nice, so as to escape the sudden changes of temperature to which Paris is subject in the spring. He made the journey, accompanied by his wife and son. Arriving at Nice, they took a pretty villa, having a view of the sea on one side, and, on the other, delicious garden, in which my little friend was surprised to find rose-trees, lilacs, and other plants in full bloom, which at Paris had scarcely begun to bud.
THEY HEARD A GREAT NOISE OF CRACKING OF WHIPS.
The climate of Nice agreed with Mr. de Roisel so well that they stayed there nearly four months, and it was already the beginning of August when the family returned once more to their own home—the pretty comfortable old house where I first introduced Maurice to my little readers. Maurice was heartily glad to be back again at his own country-home, where he had his own little garden, where he knew everybody in the village, and where even the trees in the wood, and the little winding river with its pretty water-lilies, seemed like old friends to him.
The very first day of his arrival at home, the little boy ran off to the cottage of Fritz, to see if he had returned. He found it shut up, and no one in the village had heard anything about him since his departure. Although Maurice felt rather anxious at Fritz’s prolonged absence, it yet afforded him a sort of satisfaction; for he would have been sorry that Fritz, on their first meeting, should find him without the horse. A few days more, and he hoped to be in possession of it again.
In fact he had already collected together, out of the savings of his pocket-money, the sum of a hundred francs; and the day after their arrival at home, his father wrote to Mr. Duberger to say that he should have the pleasure of bringing his little boy, on the twelfth of the month, to pay him a visit and to redeem the horse.