Professor Dornthal’s life was indeed no longer in danger, but his memory was greatly impaired, and his noble mind, if not extinct, only gave out a feeble and vacillating light. This was hoped to be merely a transient state, which time and absolute cessation from labor would soon remedy. But it was a severe affliction to them all, and Clement for the first time saw his mother’s courage waver. It was with truly a sad smile Madame Dornthal saw her husband recognize and embrace Fleurange without manifesting the slightest surprise at her presence, or realizing the time and distance that had separated them. It was the same with Clara; but when she placed her infant in his arms, there was a momentary reawakening of the invalid’s torpid memory. Tears came into his eyes; he embraced the child, murmured “God bless him!” and then gave him back to his mother, looking at him with an expression that filled them for a moment with hope. Then the gleam vanished, and he fell back into his former state. In consequence of all these circumstances, when the family assembled in the evening in the large salon on the ground floor, every brow was clouded, all the young smiling faces were grave and anxious, and the same cause for sadness weighed on every heart. Perhaps this was best for Fleurange, who, ever ready to forget herself, seemed to feel, and indeed only felt the sorrows of the rest. Ah! how her sadness, which seemed only sympathy, touched one person that night as he gazed at her in silent admiration. She was sitting between his sisters, the lamp suspended from the ceiling threw a halo around her charming face, and the voice, so dear and so long unheard, resounded for the first time in this place where everything seemed transformed by her presence! The evening, so sad for all the rest, was not so for Clement. Even his anxiety for his father was suspended: he felt a renewed hope for him as well as for everything else—yes, _every_ thing. He no longer took a dark view of things: he was, as it were, intoxicated with hope. With what a sweet confiding look she had pressed his hand! In what a tone she cried: “Dear Clement, how happy I am to see you again”! Could the future, then, be as doubtful as he had so recently feared? As to the smiles of fortune, he no longer doubted: he was sure of winning them henceforth. He once thought himself inefficient, but he was mistaken. Might he not also be mistaken in thinking himself incapable of ever pleasing?—To this question he heard no other reply but the quickened pulsations of his heart, and the rippling of the water flowing past the seat to which he had betaken himself on the banks of the river.