Although no son could have attended upon a father with more care and anxiety than I had done upon him, yet he had scarcely addressed ten words to me since his convalescence began. Those that he had spoken, indeed, had always been kind and affectionate; and I had often caught his eyes fixed upon me with a look of intense interest,--mournful, perhaps painful, but still full of regard and feeling. Nevertheless, the strangeness of his silence, which I ought to have attributed to other causes, made me anxious and unhappy; and, as I was not a person to express any of that loud indignation for ill-requited kindness, which is sure to pile contempt upon ingratitude, I frequently thought of asking his permission, calmly and tranquilly, but firmly and urgently, to return to Paris, and to mingle in the scenes of strife and turmoil which were again beginning to agitate the unquiet capital of France. I was saved, however, from the pain which such a request would have occasioned to us both. On the day following that in the course of which I had reason to believe he had relieved his bosom of the load that weighed upon his heart, and had poured forth both his sorrows and his faults to the ears of the Confessor, he beckoned me immediately after breakfast towards his library, and led the way thither himself. I followed, and closed the door; and as soon as I had done so, he put his hand upon my shoulder, and gazing in my face with an expression of deep grief, he said, "Why--why, my dear boy, did you save my life?--why--why did you preserve me to daily sorrow and continual regret?" Although I was seldom destitute of a reply, his question might have been a painful one to answer, had not my conversations with Father Ferdinand given me altogether a new view of human life from that which I had formerly entertained. "My lord," I answered, boldly, "every man, I have heard, has something to repent of in this world, and it is always better to have time here, where repentance avails us, than to go where it is a punishment instead of a penance." "You say true,--you say true," replied the Duke; "and I thank you for the life you have preserved, as well as for the kindness and the courage which prompted and enabled you to preserve it." He paused for a moment thoughtfully, and then proceeded: "You have thought me cold, unkind, ungrateful, since I have recovered life and health; but it has not been so. I have felt all that you have done for me; I have seen all that you have felt for me; and I have a thousand times longed to thank you for the whole; but ever, when I was about to speak, all the horrible memories which are in your heart and in mine, have risen up before me, and compelled me to silence. I have scarcely had courage even to address you, much less to speak with you on subjects connected with the terrible past."