On the deck of the ship bound for Languedoc, Adeline watches the sun go down over Provence and finds that the calm only sharpens what she cannot settle. She has friends and a safe home now, yet she knows no more of Theodore than she did on the Rhone, and every hope that he escaped the Marquis dies when she remembers how harshly the law treats an assault on a superior officer. Then music reaches her from the shore, so tender that it brings her back from misery to hope, and it plays a song she half knows but cannot place. The ship carries it out of hearing and she goes below disappointed, in a way the moment does not seem to justify. La Luc grows stronger on the voyage, and Clara, and more cautiously Adeline, begin to hope for his recovery.
They land at a small town in Languedoc, and that evening Adeline walks alone up through the woods, reciting verses to the sunset and the nightingale until dusk leaves her lost on a wild path. She hears men's voices, then the same flute melody, and then a sailor chases her along the moonlit sands until she runs to two strangers and begs for protection. Her pursuer turns into the woods and disappears, and this chapter never says who he was. One of the strangers is M. Verneuil, whose flute had often delighted her at Leloncourt, travelling with an old friend, M. Mauron, whose chateau stands close by. Mauron's warm invitation lifts La Luc's spirits at the inn, but the relief is short. A chevalier sends word that he wants to see Adeline, she fears the Marquis, and the visitor turns out to be Louis de la Motte.
Louis asks to speak with her alone, and in a private room he cannot bring himself to say it, breaking off again and again until she begs for the worst at once. Theodore is alive, he tells her, but he is a prisoner, and the Marquis has had him condemned to die. When Louis adds that he is on his way to Leloncourt, Adeline realises that Theodore Peyrou is La Luc's son, and La Luc learns it in the same breath. She takes Clara aside to tell her, and learns that Theodore took the name Peyrou with an estate left by a relation of his mother's, which is why she never knew his family. Louis tells La Luc that his son was first tried for leaving his post, is now condemned for assaulting the Marquis, and has less than a fortnight left. La Luc takes it with a grief that admits neither tears nor complaint, orders post horses, and sets out with his family for the prison without ever going to Mauron's chateau. He seems calm and often at prayer, but the struggle for resignation still shows in his face.
Coming Up in Chapter 20
Next the story returns to the Marquis, who has gone back to his villa by the forest to wait for news of Adeline. His servants tell him they lost her at Lyons. He then goes to the court-martial at Vaceau and has Theodore condemned, while Louis de la Motte begins visiting the prisoner in his cell out of simple pity.
