"It is I who should ask to be excused, madame," replied David, with a kindly smile. "Seeing your son leaning imprudently far out of the window just now, I made the mistake of treating him like a schoolboy. He is proud of his sixteen summers, as he should be, for at that age," continued David, with gentle gravity, "one is almost a man, and must fully understand and appreciate all the charm and happiness of a mother's love." "Monsieur!" exclaimed Frederick, impetuously, his nostrils quivering with anger, and a deep flush suffusing his pale face, "I need no lesson from you." And turning on his heel, he left the room. "Frederick!" cried Marie, reproachfully, but her son was gone; so turning her lovely face, down which tears were now streaming, to David, she said, with touching artlessness: "Ah, monsieur, I must again ask your pardon. Your kind words lead me to hope that you will understand my regret, and that you will not blame my unhappy son too severely." "He is evidently suffering, and should be pitied and soothed," replied David, sympathisingly. "When I first saw him I was startled by his pallor and the drawn appearance of his features. But he has gone, madame, and I would advise you not to leave him by himself." "Come, madame, come at once," said Doctor Dufour, offering his arm to Madame Bastien, and the latter, divided between the surprise the stranger's kindness excited and the intense anxiety she felt in regard to her son, left the room precipitately in company with the doctor to overtake Frederick. On being left alone, David walked to the window. A moment afterward, he saw Madame Bastien come out of the house with her handkerchief to her eyes and leaning on the doctor, and step into the shabby little vehicle in which Frederick had already seated himself amid the laughs and sneers of the crowd that lingered on the mall, and that had witnessed the old work-horse's misadventure. "That old nag won't forget the lesson the young marquis gave him for some time, I'll be bound," remarked one lounger. "Wasn't he a sight when he planted himself with that old rattletrap of a chaise right in the midst of our young marquis's fine carriages?" remarked another. "Yes, the old plug won't forget St. Hubert's Day in a hurry, I guess," added a third. "Nor shall I forget it," muttered Frederick, trembling with rage. At that moment the doctor assisted Madame Bastien into the vehicle, and Frederick, exasperated by the coarse jests he had just overheard, struck the innocent cause of all this commotion a furious blow, and the poor old horse, unused to such treatment, started off almost on a run. In vain Madame Bastien implored her son to moderate the animal's pace. Several persons narrowly escaped being run over. A child who was slow in getting out of the way received a cut of the whip from Frederick, and whirling rapidly around the corner at the end of the mall, the chaise disappeared from sight amid the jeers and execrations of the angry crowd.