[The Hated Son by Honore de Balzac]@TWC D-Link bookThe Hated Son CHAPTER III 35/41
His house was not far from that of Etienne, so that he was ever at hand to watch over the youth with the persistent affection and simple wiliness characteristic of old soldiers.
He checked his roughness when speaking to the poor lad; softly he walked in rainy weather to fetch him from his reverie in his crevice to the house.
He put his pride into filling the mother's place, so that her child might find, if not her love, at least the same attentions.
This pity resembled tenderness.
Etienne bore, without complaint or resistance, these attentions of the old retainer, but too many links were now broken between the hated child and other creatures to admit of any keen affection at present in his heart. Mechanically he allowed himself to be protected; he became, as it were, an intermediary creature between man and plant, or, perhaps one might say, between man and God.
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