“I beg your pardon,” said the savant, who comprehended the cruelty of his abstraction. “Permit me to pass before you to show you the way.”
He proceeded to mount the stairs which began to be dark at this time of a winter’s day. He went up slowly to suit the lassitude of his companion, who held by the rail, as if she had scarcely energy enough to ascend the four flights. Her short breath which could be heard in the provincial silence of this empty house, betrayed the feebleness of the unhappy woman.
As little sensitive as was the philosopher to the outer world, he was filled with pity when, entering his study with its closed shutters which the fire and the lamp already lighted by his servant softly illumined, he saw his visitor face to face. The wrinkle plowed from the corners of the mouth to the ala of the nose, the lips scorched by fever, the eyebrows contracted, the darkness about the eyelids, the nervousness of the hands in their black gloves, in which she held a roll of paper, without doubt some justifying memoir—all these details revealed the torture of a fixed idea; and scarcely had she fallen into a chair when she said in a broken voice:
“My God! my God! I am then too late. I wished to speak to you, monsieur, before your conversation with the judge. But you defended him, did you not? You said that it was not possible; that he had not done what they accuse him of? You do not believe him guilty, monsieur, you whom he called his master, you whom he loved so much?”
“I did not have to defend him, madame,” said the philosopher; “I was asked what had been my relations with him, and as I had seen him only twice, and he spoke only of his studies——”
“Ah!” interrupted the mother with an accent of profound anguish; and she repeated: “I have come too late. But no,” she continued, clasping her trembling hands. “You will go before the Court of Assizes to testify that he cannot be guilty, that you know he cannot be? One does not become an assassin, a poisoner, in a day. The youth of criminals prepares the way for their crimes. They are bad persons, gamblers, frequenters of the saloons. But he has always been with his books, like his poor father. I used to say to him: ‘Come, Robert run out, you must take the air, you must amuse yourself.’ If you could have seen what a quiet little life we lead, he and I, before he went into this accursed family. And it was for my sake that he should not cost me anything more that he went into it, and that he might go on with his studies.”
“He would have been admitted in three or four years and then perhaps have taken a position in a lyceum at Clermont. I should have had him marry. I have seen a good parti for him. I should have remained with him, in some corner, to take care of his children. Ah! monsieur!” and she sought in the philosopher’s eyes, a response in harmony with her passionate desire; “tell me, if it is possible for a son who had such ideas to do what they say he has done? It is infamous; is it not infamous, monsieur?”
“Be calm, madame, be calm.” These were the only words which Adrien Sixte could find to say to this mother who wept over the ruin of her most cherished hopes. Beside, being still under the impression of his conversation with the judge, she seemed to him to be so wildly beyond the truth, a prey to illusions so blind that he was stupefied, and also, why not confess it? the renewed prospect of the journey to Riom frightened him as much as the grief of the mother affected him.
These different impressions showed themselves in his manner by an uncertainty, an absence of warmth which did not deceive the mother. Extreme suffering has infallible intuitions of instinct. This woman understood that the philosopher did not believe in the innocence of her son, and with a gesture of extreme depression, recoiling from him with horror, she moaned:
“Monsieur, you too, you are with his enemies. You—you?”