"He is safe, you tell me. May the God who has spared my son remember you and bless you through all your days and in all your ways!"
He bent low. "I have my reward, Madame."
Some intuitive recognition of what was in his mind was perhaps naturally in the thought of both. She said, "Will it end here?"
Seeing before him a face which he could not read, he replied, "It is to be desired that it end here, or that some good fortune put the sea between these two."
"And can you, his friend, say that? Not if he is the son I bore. I trust not," and, turning away, she left him; while he looked after her and murmured: "There is more mother in me than in her," and going out to where René lay, he said gaily: "Out of prison at last, my boy. A grim jail is sickness."
"Ah, to hear the birds who are so free," said René. "Are they ever ill, I wonder?"
"Mr. Hamilton is below, René—just come from New York. He has been here twice."
"Then I shall hear of the world. You have starved me of news." There was little good to tell him. The duke, their cousin, had fled from France, and could write to madame only of the Terror and of deaths and ruin.
The Secretary came up fresh with the gaiety of a world in which he was still battling fiercely with the Republican party, glad of the absence of his rival, Jefferson, who saw no good in anything he did or said.