“Madame: Your son has stolen a sum of money from the honest and hard-working man with whom he lived. This sum represents the savings of years. I have not yet handed him over to the authorities, hoping that he might be induced to restore at least a portion of this money. But I am afraid that it has all been squandered among drunken companions. If that is the case, you should indemnify the Rondics for their loss. The amount is six thousand francs. I await your decision before taking any further steps.” And he signed his name. “Poor things—it is terrible news for them!” said Père Rondic, who amid his own sorrows could still think of those of others. Zénaïde looked up indignantly. “Why do you pity these people? If the boy has taken my money, let them replace it.” How pitiless is youth! The girl gave not one thought to the mother’s despair when she should hear of her son’s crime. Old Rondic, on the contrary, said to himself, “She will die of shame!” In due time this letter written by the superintendent reached its destination, as letters which contain bad news generally do. CHAPTER XV. CHARLOTTE’S JOURNEY. One gray morning Charlotte was cutting the last bunches from the vines; the poet was at work, and Dr. Hirsch was asleep, when the postman reached Aulnettes. “Ah! a letter from Indret!” said D’Argenton, slowly opening his newspapers,—“and some verses by Hugo!” Why did the poet watch this unopened letter as a dog watches a bone that he does not wish himself, and is yet determined that no one else shall touch? Simply because Charlotte’s eyes had kindled at the sight of it, and because this most selfish of beings felt that for a moment he had become a secondary object in the mother’s eyes. From the hour of Jack’s departure, his mother’s love for him had increased. She avoided speaking of him, however, lest she should irritate her poet. He divined this, and his hatred and jealousy of the child increased. And when the early letters of Rondic contained complaints of Jack, he was very much delighted. But this was not enough. He wished to mortify and degrade the boy still more. His hour had come. At the first words of the letter, for he finally opened it, his eyes flamed with malicious joy. “Ah! I knew it!” he cried, and he handed the sheet to Charlotte. What a terrible blow for her! Wounded in her maternal pride before the poet, wounded, too, by his evident satisfaction, the poor woman was still more overwhelmed by the reproaches of her own conscience. “It is my own fault!” she said to herself, “why did I abandon him?”