"Oh, my God, M. David, it matters little to me," replied Frederick, honestly, "but since you leave the choice to me, I am going to take you to a part of the wood that you perhaps are not acquainted with,--look,--near that clump of fir-trees that you see down there on the top of the hill." "True, my child, I have never been on that side of the forest," said David, walking with his pupil toward the designated spot. More and more surprised at the strange coincidence between his hopes and the sudden alteration in the son of Madame Bastien, David observed him attentively and remarked that almost always he held his head down, although, as they crossed the forest, he had two or three times turned involuntarily to look at his mother, whom he could see through the vista of tall trees, standing in the door. After examining him for some minutes, David discovered that this calmness of Frederick was feigned. Once out of the presence of his mother, the young man not only did not control himself long at a time, but became anxious and abstracted, his features contracting sometimes in pain, and again assuming an expression of painful serenity, if such a thing can be said, which alarmed David no little. Not to frighten Madame Bastien, he had tried to persuade her that the apparition of Frederick, on the preceding night, was only a dream. But David did not so believe; he regarded Frederick's farewells to his sleeping mother a reality. This circumstance, with what he had just observed in the lad, made him fear that his pupil's sudden change was a piece of acting, and might conceal some sinister motive. "But, fortunately," thought David, "I am here with him." When they had left the forest, Frederick took a road covered with turf, across the fallow ground, which, leaving the wood around Pont Brillant to the right, conducted him to the crest of a little hill where stood five or six isolated fir-trees. "My dear child," said David, at the end of a few minutes, "I am so pleased with the words of affectionate confidence you addressed to me this morning, because they could not have come at a better time." "Why is that, M. David?" "Because, secure in this confidence and affection that I have tried to inspire in you up to this time, I will now be able to undertake a task which at first seemed very difficult." "And what is this task?" "To make you as happy as you were formerly." "I!" exclaimed Frederick, involuntarily. "Yes." "But," replied Frederick, with self-repression, "I am no longer unhappy, I said so this morning to my mother; the malady that I suffered from, and which has embittered my feelings, has disappeared almost entirely. Besides, M. Dufour has told my mother that it is at an end." "Truly, my child, you are no longer unhappy? All your sorrows are at an end? Your heart is free, contented, and joyous, as it used to be?" "Monsieur--"