The sick man tormented the poor creature, who was now doomed to learn what venomous and spiteful teasing a half-imbecile man, whom poverty had rendered craftily savage, could be capable of in the weary tete-a-tete of each endless day.

Delighted to turn a sharpened arrow in the sensitive heart of the mother, he had, in a measure, studied the fears that Oscar's behavior and defects inspired in the poor woman.

When a mother receives from her child a shock like that of the affair at Presles, she continues in a state of constant fear, and, by the manner in which his wife boasted of Oscar every time he obtained the slightest success, Clapart knew the extent of her secret uneasiness, and he took pains to rouse it on every occasion.
"Well, Madame," Clapart would say, "Oscar is doing better than I even hoped.

That journey to Presles was only a heedlessness of youth.

Where can you find young lads who do not commit just such faults?
Poor child! he bears his privations heroically! If his father had lived, he would never have had any.