Well, pardon me if I sound rough, but while the chapter was enjoyable I'm sorry to say it does not compare to the previous ones. The reason, for me, is that it's a flashback. And as I've said in my critique on chapter one I'm not really a fan of flashbacks. To me they're are most often used as a heavy-handed way of giving the reader information about a character.
Bam, these are the salient events that made the character who he is today. No mystery, instant understanding, and now that we understand we can move on to things we apparently need this understanding for. For my part I like it if I get to know the characters over time; this is too much too early. Do we need to know this? We already know he's a bastard, that he's the son of a whore (which means his life was not easy, which can be inferred without this chapter), that he feels responsible for the people he grew up with, and that Elle is important to him.
The only thing this chapter adds is how he got to know Elle, what their relationship was, and how she got to be sleeping like the dead. At this point of the story I don't need this information. I knew he cared for her, I knew she was somehow in a comatose state, and the mystery of what this meant was more interesting than knowing up front. This chapter also takes the pace down by focusing on the past and I think you're better off without it.
Another thing I found problematic is that Mathieu is very young in this chapter, but he doesn't read like a child his age should. I'm not really good with writing young children, like Mathieu here they often become mini-adults. The feelings, responses, speech patterns, they don't fit a four year old. It works better in the part where he's eight, but even there it's a bit off.
Maybe the reason for how he acts is that he matures faster as a cold one – we've seen this is so physically,so it's not much of a stretch to have mental maturity as well. Even so, when a child doesn't act like a child would it sticks out.
