While I was thus recalling these remembrances to my mind, Michael had come in, and was occupied in fixing shelves where they were wanted.

During the time I was writing the notes of my journal, I was also scrutinizing the joiner.

The excesses of his youth and the labor of his manhood have deeply marked his face; his hair is thin and gray, his shoulders stoop, his legs are shrunken and slightly bent.  There seems a sort of weight in his whole being.  His very features have an expression of sorrow and despondency.  He answers my questions by monosyllables, and like a man who wishes to avoid conversation.  Whence comes this dejection, when one would think he had all he could wish for?  I should like to know!

Ten o’clock.—­Michael is just gone downstairs to look for a tool he has forgotten.  I have at last succeeded in drawing from him the secret of his and Genevieve’s sorrow.  Their son Robert is the cause of it!

Not that he has turned out ill after all their care—­not that he is idle or dissipated; but both were in hopes he would never leave them any more.  The presence of the young man was to have renewed and made glad their lives once more; his mother counted the days, his father prepared everything to receive their dear associate in their toils; and at the moment when they were thus about to be repaid for all their sacrifices, Robert had suddenly informed them that he had just engaged himself to a contractor at Versailles.

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.