“I may get a lucky number,” said Oscar.

“Suppose you do, what then?  Your mother has well fulfilled her duty towards you.  She gave you an education; she placed you on the right road, and secured you a career.  You have left it.  Now, what can you do?  Without money, nothing; as you know by this time.  You are not a man who can begin a new career by taking off your coat and going to work in your shirt-sleeves with the tools of an artisan.  Besides, your mother loves you, and she would die to see you come to that.”

Oscar sat down and no longer restrained his tears, which flowed copiously.  At last he understood this language, so completely unintelligible to him ever since his first fault.

“Men without means ought to be perfect,” added Moreau, not suspecting the profundity of that cruel sentence.

“My fate will soon be decided,” said Oscar.  “I draw my number the day after to-morrow.  Between now and then I will decide upon my future.”

Moreau, deeply distressed in spite of his stern bearing, left the household in the rue de la Cerisaie to its despair.

Three days later Oscar drew the number twenty-seven.  In the interests of the poor lad the former steward of Presles had the courage to go to the Comte de Serizy and ask for his influence to get Oscar into the cavalry.  It happened that the count’s son, having left the Ecole Polytechnique rather low in his class, was appointed, as a favor, sub-lieutenant in a regiment of cavalry commanded by the Duc de Maufrigneuse.  Oscar had, therefore, in his great misfortune, the small luck of being, at the Comte de Serizy’s instigation, drafted into that noble regiment, with the promise of promotion to quartermaster within a year.  Chance had thus placed the ex-clerk under the command of the son of the Comte de Serizy.

Madame Clapart, after languishing for some days, so keenly was she affected by these catastrophes, became a victim to the remorse which seizes upon many a mother whose conduct has been frail in her youth, and who, in her old age, turns to repentance.  She now considered herself under a curse.  She attributed the sorrows of her second marriage and the misfortunes of her son to a just retribution by which God was compelling her to expiate the errors and pleasures of her youth.  This opinion soon became a certainty in her mind.  The poor woman went, for the first time in forty years, to confess herself to the Abbe Gaudron, vicar of Saint-Paul’s, who led her into the practice of devotion.  But so ill-used and loving a soul as that of Madame Clapart’s could never be anything but simply pious.  The Aspasia of the Directory wanted to expiate her sins in order to draw down the blessing of God on the head of her poor Oscar, and she henceforth vowed herself to works and deeds of the purest piety.  She believed she had won the attention of heaven when she saved the life of Monsieur Clapart, who, thanks to her devotion, lived on to torture her; but she chose to see, in the tyranny of that imbecile mind, a trial inflicted by the hand of one who loveth while he chasteneth.