Claude had uttered these last words with anguish, almost in the tone of a suppliant who hastens to seize the favourable moment. Gutenberg turned away, and after a somewhat prolonged silence, he said, in a low voice, to the young Frenchman--“Claude, a countrywoman of thine once sang that song to me in bidding me adieu--a good girl, who had a noble heart--her name was the same as thy mother’s; thou sayest thy mother’s name is Gisquette.” The old man hid his face in his hands, while Claude, falling at Gutenberg’s feet, embraced his knees, murmuring, “My father, my father! Do you not guess? She who sang that song was my mother!”
A cry escaped from Gutenberg; his stick fell from his hand; the sightless eyes seemed to seek the face of the young man at his knees. “It is false,” he said; “have pity on me--O tell me not an untruth!”
“By the quenched light of those eyes, which I love, by the heart of Gisquette, I speak the truth. I am thy son, and she was my mother!” Claude uttered these words with all the vivacity of a Frenchman. Gutenberg answered not, his bosom heaved painfully--one could see the struggle between mistrust and the wish to believe. “But why----” asked he. “Father,” replied Claude, who perceived at once what was passing in Gutenberg’s mind, “dost thou not yet understand the nature of my mission, why I presented myself to thee, why I followed thee, how it is that I have ended by loving thee as I do, even to adoration? And dost thou not guess how I was bound by my mother, by a solemn oath, never to utter a single word that could recall her to thy memory, until thou thyself hadst in some manner named her?--‘Be, if it must be so, his most humble attendant, for he is thy father; and if thou findest Gutenberg in prosperity, which I pray Heaven he may be, and he has forgotten the days at Aix-la-Chapelle, oh, do not invoke the shade of poor Gisquette to place it between him and happiness! But if he is in trouble he will of himself think of me; then fall at his feet, kiss the ground he treads on, and say to him, Be comforted, it is _she_ who sends thy son to thee!’”
“Enough, enough, by the Holy Saviour, enough!” cried Gutenberg, straining in his arms the young man who still knelt before him. “Yes, it is she herself! I recognize her in those words, my son! my child!”