"Later, my son, I was no more willing to hear, and even after our ruin and flight to England last January, my grief left me no desire to be doubly pained. But now—now, I have felt that even at much cost I should hear it all, and then forever, with God's help, put it away with the past, as you must try to do. His death was the more sad to me because all his sympathies were with the party bent on ruining our country. Ah, René, could he have guessed that he who had such hopeful belief in what those changes would effect should die by the hand of a Jacobin mob! I wish now to hear the whole story."
"All of it, mother?" He was deeply troubled.
"Yes, all—all without reserve."
She sat back in her chair, gazing up the darkening river, her hands lying supine on her knees. "Go on, my son, and do not make me question you."
"Yes, mother." There were things he had been glad to forget and some he had set himself never to forget. He knew, however, that now, on the whole, it was better to be frank. He sat still, thinking how best he could answer her. Understanding the reluctance his silence expressed, she said, "You will, René?"
"Yes, dear mother"; and so on the deck at fall of night, in an alien land, the young man told his story of one of the first of the minor tragedies which, as a Jacobin said, were useless except to give a good appetite for blood.
It was hard to begin. He had in perfection the memory of things seen, the visualizing capacity. He waited, thinking how to spare her that which at her summons was before him in all the distinctness of an hour of unequaled anguish.
She felt for him and knew the pain she was giving, comprehending him with a fullness rare to the mother mind. "This is not a time to spare me," she said, "nor yourself. Go on." She spoke sternly, not turning her head, but staring up the long stretch of solitary water.
"It shall be as you wish," he returned slowly. "In September of last year you were in Paris with our cousin, La Rochefoucauld, about our desperate money straits, when the assembly decreed the seizure of Avignon from the Pope's vice-legate. This news seemed to make possible the recovery of rents due us in that city. My father thought it well for me to go with him—"
"Yes, yes, I know; but go on."