Henry was a youth of fifteen, which is as much as to say that he had good intentions, but did not always carry them out in practice. He loved his father and his tutor, but he loved his pleasures still more; he would have done anything to make them happy, but he did not give them the greatest of all happiness, that of seeing him docile and well-conducted. The impetuosity of his disposition often drew from those he loved bitter tears, which in the end made his own flow. His life was thus divided between faults and repentance; and his good intentions were so continually rendered useless by reprehensible actions, that his friends at last gave up all hopes of his amendment. His father, the Count of A——, was constantly thinking, with increasing anxiety, of the time when Henry must leave him to enter the university, or to travel. The paths of vice would then present themselves to him under the most seductive aspects, and there would no longer be the hand of a father to restrain or his voice to call him back; he might fall deeper and deeper into error, and return to the paternal mansion with a heart corrupted, despoiled of its purity and elevation, and incapable even of that feeling which is at least the reflection of virtue—repentance.

The count was of a mild but feeble character, and his health was delicate; the death of the countess, his wife, had mined beneath his feet the ground on which he rested. Henry, on the return of his father's birthday, fancied that he could hear a secret voice saying to him, "The fragile layer of earth which bears thy father, and separates him from thy mother's ashes, will soon crumble away, and he will disappear from thy view without carrying with him to the tomb the hope of thy amendment." This day he shed burning tears; but what avail tears and softened feelings when they do not produce amendment? He went into the park where stood the tomb of his mother, together with the empty sepulchre which, during an illness, his father had caused to be constructed for himself. There, he made a solemn vow to combat the violence of his temper and his love of pleasure; but, alas! I should too deeply grieve my young readers were I to relate in detail how only a few days before that appointed for his going to the university, he was guilty of a fault which cruelly pierced the heart of his unhappy father, already so deeply wounded. The count fell ill, and was confined to his bed without being able to flatter himself with the hope that he might witness the return of his son to virtue, before he was called upon to exchange his melancholy couch for the bed of stone which awaited him in the park.

I will not then describe to you either the fault or the regret of Henry; but in passing a severe judgment on his errors you may as well extend it also to those of which at any time you may yourselves have been guilty. What child can approach the dying bed of his parents, without saying to himself, "Alas! if I have not deprived them of whole years of life, who knows by how many weeks or days I may not have shortened their term? I may perhaps have added to the sufferings which now I would so gladly have mitigated, and my follies may have closed before their time those eyes which, but for me, might still enjoy the light of day!" It is because the fatal consequences of our faults are concealed from view that reckless mortals are so bold in the commission of crimes: man gives free scope to the ungoverned desires of his heart, as he might let loose a set of ferocious animals; he permits them under favour of the darkness to wander amongst mankind; but he sees not how many innocent people are wounded or torn to pieces: he madly flings around him burning brands, lighted by guilty passions, and when he has already sunk into the tomb, the neighbouring houses on which the fatal spark has alighted, burst into flames, and the dense column of smoke hovers over the place of his repose like a monument raised to his shame.

Henry, when all hope of recovery was at an end, could no longer support the melancholy and care-worn aspect of his father: he remained in the adjacent chamber, and there, whilst the count's ebbing life was struggling against repeated fainting-fits, he addressed his silent prayers to Heaven, closed his eyes to the future, and dreaded, like the explosion of a terrible shell, those first awful words, "He is dead." The time, however, came when he must present himself before his father, take leave of him, receive his forgiveness, and give him his promise of amendment.

Alone in the apartment adjoining that of the invalid, he had roused himself from a long and painful stupor: he listened, and heard only the voice of his aged tutor, who had been his father's preceptor also, and who, now seeing the approach of the shadows of death, gave him his blessing in these words: "Go calmly to thy sleep, virtuous soul! May all thy good actions, all thy promises fulfilled, all thy pious thoughts, be gathered around thee at the close of life, as the beautiful clouds of evening gather round the sun when sinking in the west! Smile once more if you can hear my words, and if your dying heart has still the power of feeling." The invalid made an effort to rouse himself from the heavy sleep of his swoon, but he did not smile, for, in the confusion of his senses, he had mistaken the voice of his preceptor for that of his son. "Henry," he stammered in imperfect accents, "I cannot see you, but I hear you. Lay your hand on my heart, and solemnly promise me that you will become virtuous." Henry rushed forward to make this promise, but the preceptor had already placed his hand on the fluttering heart of the father, and, with a sign to the son, said, in a low voice, "I promise for you." The heart of the count was still beating with that slow and languid motion which announces the near extinction of life; he neither heard the vow, nor the friends who surrounded him.

Henry, sinking under this heart-rending scene, and trembling for that which must succeed it, resolved to quit the chÂteau, and not return till the most agonizing hours of his affliction should have passed away, but he felt that this amendment must not commence by a secret flight. He therefore announced to his preceptor, "that he could no longer support this dreadful sight, but that he would return in a week," and then he added, in a voice choked with grief, "I shall still find a father here." He embraced him, told him where he meant to seclude himself, and left the house.

With faltering steps he traversed the park. He perceived the two white sepulchres visible through the trees, and approached them. Not daring to touch the yet empty tomb beneath which his father was to repose, he leaned against the one which covered a heart which he had not broken, that of his mother, whom he had lost many years before. On that mother's tomb, and in the presence of God, he renewed his vow of amendment.

Every step he took brought back the memory of his errors; a child led by his father, a pit, a fading leaf, the sound of a church-bell, all awakened the most painful recollections.

He reached the place of his retreat, but after four days of remorse, of tears and of anguish, he felt that he ought to return to the chÂteau, and prove the sincerity of his regret for the loss of his father by imitating his virtues. The most noble commemoration that man can offer to those whom he has loved, and whose loss he deplores, is to dry the tears of those who suffer;—a series of good works is the fairest garland that can be suspended over their tombs.

Henry again turned his steps homewards: it was evening when he crossed the park; and the dusky pyramid which surmounted his father's tomb looked through the trees, like one of those grey clouds which float in the azure sky, over the blackened ruins of a village destroyed by fire. Henry stopped: he leaned his head against the cold marble, his face bathed with tears, but there was no gentle voice to bid him "be consoled." No father there to show his affection by tenderly repeating, "I pardon thee." The rustling of the leaves sounded to him as a murmur of anger, and the obscurity of the evening chilled him with the terror of some horrible gloom. However, he recovered himself, and renewed in these words the vow which his tutor had pronounced in his name: "Oh! father! dear father! Do you hear your poor child who is weeping over your grave? Look at me; on my knees I implore your forgiveness, I promise to fulfil the vow which my tutor pronounced for me upon your dying heart. Oh father! father!"—here grief stifled his voice—"will you not give your child some token of your forgiveness!"

A rustling among the leaves was audible, a figure slowly advancing put aside the branches, and said, "I have pardoned you." It was his father! That which is intermediate between sleep and death, a deep swoon, had restored him to life by throwing him into a salutary lethargy. It was the first time he had been out, and he came, accompanied by his ancient preceptor, to offer his thanks on his tomb. Tender father! if thou hadst indeed passed into another world, thy heart could not thus have throbbed with joy, nor thine eyes shed tears of happiness, on the return of a penitent son who came to cast at thy feet a regenerate man!

I cannot draw the curtain over this affecting scene, without addressing one important question to my young readers. Are you still so happy as to possess a father and a mother, to whom you may afford inexpressible joy by your affection and your good conduct? Ah! if any one of you has hitherto neglected to procure them this felicity, I will take upon me the office of a conscience which cannot fail some day to awaken, and I tell him that a time will come when nothing can afford him consolation if he has to say to himself, "They loved me above all things, yet I have seen them expire without having given them the happiness of being able to say, My child is virtuous."