"Hey! tete-Dieu! where has he hid himself?" cried the duke, reaching
the rock beside which his son had been lying.
"He is there," replied Bertrand, pointing to a narrow crevice, the
edges of which had been polished smooth by the repeated assaults of
the high tide.
"Etienne, my beloved son!" called the old man.
The hated child made no reply. For hours the duke entreated,
threatened, implored in turn, receiving no response. Sometimes he was
silent, with his ear at the cleft of the rock, where even his
enfeebled hearing could detect the beating of Etienne's heart, the
quick pulsations of which echoed from the sonorous roof of his rocky
hiding-place.
"At least _he_ lives!" said the old man, in a heartrending voice.
Towards the middle of the day, the father, reduced to despair, had
recourse to prayer:--
"Etienne," he said, "my dear Etienne, God has punished me for
disowning you. He has deprived me of your brother. To-day you are my
only child. I love you more than I love myself. I see the wrong I have
done; I know that you have in your veins my blood with that of your
mother, whose misery was my doing.
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