“Come and embrace me, I beg of you,” he murmured.
The child had already advanced smiling, when the woman who was following him, who was his old nurse, suddenly appeared. ‘She made a gesture of fright:
“Your father!” she said, in a stifled voice.
At these words the child uttered a cry of terror, rushed back to the nurse, pressed against her, and regarded his father with frightened eyes.
The nurse took him by the arm, and earned him off in great haste.
M. de Camors did not weep. A frightful contraction distorted the corners of his mouth, and exaggerated the thinness of his cheeks. He had two or three shudderings as if seized with sudden fever. He slowly passed his hand over his forehead, sighed profoundly, and departed.
Madame de Campvallon knew nothing of this sad scene, but she saw its consequences; and she herself felt them bitterly. The character of M. de Camors, already so changed, became after this unrecognizable. He showed her no longer even the cold politeness he had manifested for her up to that period. He exhibited a strange antipathy toward her. He fled from her. She perceived he avoided even touching her hand.
They saw each other rarely now. The health of Camors did not admit of his taking regular meals. These two desolate existences offered then, in the midst of the almost royal state which surrounded them, a spectacle of pity.
In this magnificent park—across these beautiful gardens, with great vases of marble—under long arcades of verdure peopled with more statues-both wandered separately, like two sad shadows, meeting sometimes but never speaking.
One day, near the end of September, Camors did not descend from his apartment. Daniel told the Marquise he had given orders to let no one enter.