Madame Dornthal stopped a moment to brush away her tears, then smiled as she continued:
“But be easy, he knows everything now. He comprehends the state of affairs, and feels as we do. It is better, however, that I alone should see him this evening. Give me those papers. And you, my boy, see after your brother and sister. I have not had time to think of them. Ah! and Gabrielle, poor child, perhaps it would be well to look for her also and tell her all. We have nothing to conceal from any one, above all from her.”
Without awaiting a reply, Madame Dornthal abruptly left her son to rejoin her husband in the library, where she remained the rest of the evening.
“O Patrick! taught by him, the Unknown, These questions answer ere I die:-- Why, when the trees at evening moan, Why must an old man sigh?
“No kinsmen of my stock are they, Though reared was I in sylvan cell: Love-whispers once they breathed: this day They mutter but ‘farewell.’
“What mean the floods? Of old they said, ‘Thus, thus, ye chiefs, ye clans, sweep on!’ They whiten still their rocky bed: Those chiefs and clans are gone.
“What Power is that which daily heaves O’er earth’s dark verge the rising sun, As large, the Druid, Alph, believes, As Tork or Maugerton?
“A woman once, in youthful flower, An infant laid upon my knee: What was it shook my heart that hour? I live--Where now is he?
“What thing is youth, which speeds so fast? What thing is life, which lags so long? Trapped, trapped we are by age at last, In a net of fraud and wrong!
“I cheated am by Eld--or cheat-- Heart-young as leaves in sun that bask: Is that fresh heart a counterfeit, Or this gray shape a mask?
“Some say ‘tis folly to be moved. ‘The dog, he dieth--why not thou?’ They lie! We loved! The ill reproved!-- Is Oscar nothing now?
“O Patrick of the crosier staff, The wondrous Book, the anthems slow! If thou the riddle know’st but half, Help those who nothing know!
“Who made the worlds? the Soul? Man’s race? The man that knoweth, he is Man! I, once a prince, will serve in place Clansman of that man’s clan!”
“Instead of considering the physical condition of a nation determining its moral character, we must always regard the moral as determining, as well as moulding and modifying, the physical.”