"What is it, Joseph?" asked Camors.
"A letter which—which Monsieur le Comte wrote for you before he left."
"Before he left! my father is gone, then? But—where—how? What, the devil! why do you weep?"
Unable to speak, the servant handed him the paper. Camors seized it and tore it open.
"Good God! there is blood! what is this!" He read the first words— "My son, life is a burden to me. I leave it—" and fell fainting to the floor.
The poor lad loved his father, notwithstanding the past.
They carried him to his chamber.
CHAPTER III
DEBRIS FROM THE REVOLUTION
De Camors, on leaving college had entered upon life with a heart swelling with the virtues of youth—confidence, enthusiasm, sympathy. The horrible neglect of his early education had not corrupted in his veins those germs of weakness which, as his father declared, his mother's milk had deposited there; for that father, by shutting him up in a college to get rid of him for twelve years, had rendered him the greatest service in his power.