Every remonstrance and every prayer were useless; he brought forward the necessity of initiating himself into all the details of an important contract, the facilities he should have in his new position of improving himself in his trade, and the hopes he had of turning his knowledge to advantage.  At, last, when his mother, having come to the end of her arguments, began to cry, he hastily kissed her, and went away that he might avoid any further remonstrances.

He had been absent a year, and there was nothing to give them hopes of his return.  His parents hardly saw him once a month, and then he only stayed a few moments with them.

“I have been punished where I had hoped to be rewarded,” Michael said to me just now.  “I had wished for a saving and industrious son, and God has given me an ambitious and avaricious one!  I had always said to myself that when once he was grown up we should have him always with us, to recall our youth and to enliven our hearts.  His mother was always thinking of getting him married, and having children again to care for.  You know women always will busy themselves about others.  As for me, I thought of him working near my bench, and singing his new songs; for he has learnt music, and is one of the best singers at the Orpheon.

“A dream, sir, truly!  Directly the bird was fledged, he took to flight, and remembers neither father nor mother.  Yesterday, for instance, was the day we expected him; he should have come to supper with us.  No Robert to-day, either!  He has had some plan to finish, or some bargain to arrange, and his old parents are put down last in the accounts, after the customers and the joiner’s work.  Ah! if I could have guessed how it would have turned out!  Fool! to have sacrificed my likings and my money, for nearly twenty years, to the education of a thankless son!  Was it for this I took the trouble to cure myself of drinking, to break with my friends, to become an example to the neighborhood?  The jovial good fellow has made a goose of himself.  Oh! if I had to begin again!  No, no! you see women and children are our bane.  They soften our hearts; they lead us a life of hope and affection; we pass a quarter of our lives in fostering the growth of a grain of corn which is to be everything to us in our old age, and when the harvest-time comes—­good-night, the ear is empty!”

While he was speaking, Michael’s voice became hoarse, his eyes fierce, and his lips quivered.  I wished to answer him, but I could only think of commonplace consolations, and I remained silent.  The joiner pretended he needed a tool, and left me.

Poor father!  Ah!  I know those moments of temptation when virtue has failed to reward us, and we regret having obeyed her!  Who has not felt this weakness in hours of trial, and who has not uttered, at least once, the mournful exclamation of Brutus?