“Poor mother!  I have deceived her,” he cried, as he made his way to the Sarthe.

He reached the noble poplar beneath which he had meditated so much for the last forty days, and where he had placed two heavy stones on which he now sat down.  He contemplated that beautiful nature lighted by the moon; he reviewed once more the glorious future he had longed for; he passed through towns that were stirred by his name; he heard the applauding crowds; he breathed the incense of his fame; he adored that life long dreamed of; radiant, he sprang to radiant triumphs; he raised his stature; he evoked his illusions to bid them farewell in a last Olympic feast.  The magic had been potent for a moment; but now it vanished forever.  In that awful hour he clung to the beautiful tree to which, as to a friend, he had attached himself; then he put the two stones into the pockets of his overcoat, which he buttoned across his breast.  He had come intentionally without a hat.  He now went to the deep pool he had long selected, and glided into it resolutely, trying to make as little noise as possible, and, in fact, making scarcely any.

When, at half-past nine o’clock, Madame Granson returned home, her servant said nothing of Athanase, but gave her a letter.  She opened it and read these few words,—­

“My good mother, I have departed; don’t be angry with me.”

“A pretty trick he has played me!” she thought.  “And his linen! and the money!  Well, he will write to me, and then I’ll follow him.  These poor children think they are so much cleverer than their fathers and mothers.”

And she went to bed in peace.

During the preceding morning the Sarthe had risen to a height foreseen by the fisherman.  These sudden rises of muddy water brought eels from their various runlets.  It so happened that a fisherman had spread his net at the very place where poor Athanase had flung himself, believing that no one would ever find him.  About six o’clock in the morning the man drew in his net, and with it the young body.  The few friends of the poor mother took every precaution in preparing her to receive the dreadful remains.  The news of this suicide made, as may well be supposed, a great excitement in Alencon.  The poor young man of genius had no protector the night before, but on the morrow of his death a thousand voices cried aloud, “I would have helped him.”  It is so easy and convenient to be charitable gratis!

The suicide was explained by the Chevalier de Valois.  He revealed, in a spirit of revenge, the artless, sincere, and genuine love of Athanase for Mademoiselle Cormon.  Madame Granson, enlightened by the chevalier, remembered a thousand little circumstances which confirmed the chevalier’s statement.  The story then became touching, and many women wept over it.  Madame Granson’s grief was silent, concentrated, and little understood.  There are two forms of mourning for mothers.  Often the world can enter