"With all my heart, my brave boy," replied David, exchanging a look of surprise and happiness with Madame Bastien. "Thank you, M. David," replied Frederick, pressing with emotion the hands of his preceptor in his own; "thank you for my mother and for myself." "Ah, my child," said Madame Bastien, quickly, "I cannot tell you how happy you make me; our sad days are all at an end." "Yes, mother; and I swear to you that it will not be I who will cause you sorrow." "My dear Frederick," said David, smiling, "you know that I am not an ordinary preceptor, and that I love to take the fields for my study-hall; the weather is quite fine this morning, suppose we go out for a walk." Frederick started imperceptibly. Then he replied, immediately: "I am at your service, M. David." And turning to Madame Bastien, he said: "Good-bye, mother!" and embraced the young woman. It is impossible to describe what Madame Bastien felt when she heard the words, "Good-bye, mother." These words which, the night before, whether illusion or reality, had filled her heart with such gloomy forebodings! Marie thought, too, that her son, so to speak, made his kisses linger longer than was his habit, and that his hand that she held trembled in her own. The emotion of the young mother was so intense that her face became deadly pale, and she exclaimed, in spite of herself, with an accent of fright: "My God, Frederick, where are you going?" David's eyes did not leave Madame Bastien a moment; he understood all, and said to her, with the most natural air in the world, at the same time placing intentional stress on certain words: "Why, madame, Frederick has said _good-bye_ to you because he is going to take a walk with me." "Of course, mother," added the young man, struck with the emotion of Madame Bastien, and secretly throwing on her an anxious and penetrating glance. David surprised this glance, and he made an expressive sign to Madame Bastien, as much as to say: "What have you to fear? Am I not there?" "That is true; my fears are foolish," thought Madame Bastien. "Is not M. David with Frederick?" All this passed in much less time than it takes to write it. The preceptor, taking Frederick by the arm, said to Madame Bastien, smiling: "It is probable, madame, that our class in the open field will last until breakfast. You see that I am without pity for my pupil. I wish to bring him back to you weary with fatigue." Madame Bastien opened the glass door which led into the study hall under the grove. David and Frederick went out. The youth evaded his mother's glance a second time. For a long time the young woman remained sad and thoughtful on the threshold of the door, her eyes fixed on the road that her son and David had taken. "I leave the choice of our walk to you, my dear child," said David to Frederick, when they had reached the edge of the forest.