The words were spoken in tones delicious to his heart. The boy sprang to his mother’s arms, and the two held each other in an almost convulsive embrace. “_Cherie_,” he said at last, the name by which he often called her, finding that even loving words were too weak to express his feeling, “_cherie_, why are you afraid that you are going to die?” “I am ill, my poor darling; every day I am losing strength, and there is no cure for my illness; I know that.” “What is the matter with you?” “Something that I ought to forget; something that you must never know.--You must not know what caused my death.” The boy was silent for a while. He stole a glance now and again at his mother; and she, with her eyes raised to the sky, was watching the clouds. It was a sad, sweet moment. Louis could not believe that his mother would die soon, but instinctively he felt trouble which he could not guess. He respected her long musings. If he had been rather older, he would have read happy memories blended with thoughts of repentance, the whole story of a woman’s life in that sublime face--the careless childhood, the loveless marriage, a terrible passion, flowers springing up in storm and struck down by the thunderbolt into an abyss from which there is no return. “Darling mother,” Louis said at last, “why do you hide your pain from me?” “My boy, we ought to hide our troubles from strangers,” she said; “we should show them a smiling face, never speak of ourselves to them, nor think about ourselves; and these rules, put in practice in family life, conduce to its happiness. You will have much to bear one day! Ah me! then think of your poor mother who died smiling before your eyes, hiding her sufferings from you, and you will take courage to endure the ills of life.” She choked back her tears, and tried to make the boy understand the mechanism of existence, the value of money, the standing and consideration that it gives, and its bearing on social position; the honorable means of gaining a livelihood, and the necessity of a training. Then she told him that one of the chief causes of her sadness and her tears was the thought that, on the morrow of her death, he and Marie would be left almost resourceless, with but a slender stock of money, and no friend but God. “How quick I must be about learning!” cried Louis, giving her a piteous, searching look. “Oh! how happy I am!” she said, showering kisses and tears on her son. “He understands me!--Louis,” she went on, “you will be your brother’s guardian, will you not? You promise me that? You are no longer a child!” “Yes, I promise,” he said; “but you are not going to die yet--say that you are not going to die!” “Poor little ones!” she replied, “love for you keeps the life in me. And this country is so sunny, the air is so bracing, perhaps----” “You make me love Touraine more than ever,” said the child.