ded in drawing from him the
secret of his and Genevieve's sorrow. Their son Robert is the cause
of it.

Not that he has turned out ill after all their care--not that he is
idle or dissipated; but both were in hopes he would never leave them
any more. The presence of the young man was to have renewed and made
glad their lives once more; his mother counted the days, his father
prepared everything to receive their dear associate in their toils,
and at the moment when they were thus about to be repaid for all
their sacrifices, Robert had suddenly informed them that he had just
engaged himself to a contractor at Versailles.

Every remonstrance and every prayer were useless; he brought forward
the necessity of initiating himself into all the details of an
important contract, the facilities he should have, in his new
position, of improving himself in his trade, and the hopes he had of
turning his knowledge to advantage. At last, when his mother, having
come to the end of her arguments, began to cry, he hastily kissed
her, and went away, that he might avoid any further remonstrances.

He had been absent a year, and there was nothing to give them hopes
of his return. His parents hardly saw him once a month, and then he
only stayed a few moments with them.

"I have been punished where I had hoped to be rewarded," Michael
said to me just now; "I had wished for a saving and industrious son,
and God has given me an ambitious and avaricious one. I had always
said to myself, that, when once he was grown up, we should have him
always with us, to recall our youth and to enliven our hearts; his
mother was always thinking of getting him married, and having
children again to care for. You know women always will busy
themselves about others. As for me, I thought of him working near my
bench, and singing his new songs--for he has learnt music, and is
one of the best singers at the Orpheon. A dream, sir, truly!
Directly the bird was fledged, he took to flight, and remembers
neither father nor mother. Yesterday, for instance, was the day we
expected him; he should have come to supper with us. No Robert
to-day, either! He has had some plan to finish, or some bargain to
arrange, and his old parents are put down last in the accounts,
after the customers and the joiner's work. Ah! if I could have
guessed how it would have turned out! Fool! to have sacrificed my
likings and my money, for nearly twenty years, to the education of a
thankless so