The child, at a sign, knelt down at his mother’s feet in his light night-garments, and while she held his joined hands in her own, he began in a loud voice his evening prayers.  She whispered him from time to time a word that escaped him.  This prayer, composed of a number of phrases adapted to a youthful mind, terminated with these words:  “O God! be good and merciful to my mother, my grandmother, to me—­and above all, O God, to my unfortunate father.”  He pronounced these words with childish haste, but under a serious look from his mother, he repeated them immediately, with some emotion, as a child who repeats the inflection of a voice which has been taught him.

Camors turned suddenly and retired noiselessly, leaving the garden by the nearest gate.  A fixed idea tortured him.  He wished to see his son—­to speak to him—­to embrace him, and to press him to his heart.  After that, he cared for little.

He remembered they had formerly the habit of taking the child to the dairy every morning to give him a cup of milk.  He hoped they had continued this custom.  Morning arrived, and soon came the hour for which he waited.  He hid himself in the walk which led to the farm.  He heard the noise of feet, of laughter, and of joyous cries, and his son suddenly appeared running in advance.  He was a charming little boy of five or six years, of a graceful and proud mien.  On perceiving M. de Camors in the middle of the walk he stopped, he hesitated at this unknown or half-forgotten face; but the tender and half-supplicating smile of Camors reassured him.

“Monsieur!” he said, doubtfully.

Camors opened his arms and bent as if to kneel before him.

“Come and embrace me, I beg of you,” he murmured.

The child had already advanced smiling, when the woman who was following him, who was his old nurse, suddenly appeared.  ’She made a gesture of fright: 

“Your father!” she said, in a stifled voice.

At these words the child uttered a cry of terror, rushed back to the nurse, pressed against her, and regarded his father with frightened eyes.

The nurse took him by the arm, and earned him off in great haste.

M. de Camors did not weep.  A frightful contraction distorted the corners of his mouth, and exaggerated the thinness of his cheeks.  He had two or three shudderings as if seized with sudden fever.  He slowly passed his hand over his forehead, sighed profoundly, and departed.

Madame de Campvallon knew nothing of this sad scene, but she saw its consequences; and she herself felt them bitterly.  The character of M. de Camors, already so changed, became after this unrecognizable.  He showed her no longer even the cold politeness he had manifested for her up to that period.  He exhibited a strange antipathy toward her.  He fled from her.  She perceived he avoided even touching her hand.

They saw each other rarely now.  The health of Camors did not admit of his taking regular meals.  These two desolate existences offered then, in the midst of the almost royal state which surrounded them, a spectacle of pity.