urdered him, and he was lying out
there on the battlefield with a wound under the heart! She had never
known how strong her love for him had been, and now the thought that she
was to see him no more, that he who was hers was hers no longer, aroused
her almost to a pitch of madness and made her forget her usual tranquil
resignation. She set Charlot roughly down upon the floor, exclaiming:

"Good! I shall not believe that story until I see the evidence of it,
until I see it with my own eyes. Since you know the spot you shall
conduct me to it. And if it is true, if we find him, we will bring him
home with us."

Her tears allowed her to say no more; she bowed her head upon the table,
her frame convulsed by long-drawn, tumultuous sobs that shook her from
head to foot, while the child, not knowing what to make of such unusual
treatment at his mother's hands, also commenced to weep violently. She
caught him up and pressed him to her heart, with distracted, stammering
words:

"My poor child! my poor child!"

Consternation was depicted on old Fouchard's face. Appearances
notwithstanding, he did love his son, after a fashion of his own.
Memories of the past came back to him, of days long vanished, when his
wife was still living and Honore was a boy at school, and two big
tears appeared in his small red eyes and trickled down his old leathery
cheeks. He had not wept before in more than ten years. In the end he
grew angry at the thought of that son who was his and upon whom he was
never to set eyes again; he rapped out an oath or two.

"_Nom de Dieu!_ it is provoking all the same, to have only one boy, and
that he should be taken from you!"

When their agitation had in a measure subsided, however, Fouchard was
annoyed that Silvine still continued to talk of going to search for
Honore's body out there on the battlefield. She made no further noisy
demonstration, but harbored her purpose with the dogged silence of
despair, and he failed to recognize in her the docile, obedient servant
who was wont to perform her daily tasks without a murmur; her great,
submissive eyes, in which lay the chief beauty of her face, had assumed
an expression of stern determination, while beneath her thick brown hair
her cheeks and brow wore a pallor that was like death. She had torn off
the red kerchief that was knotted about her neck, and was entirely in
black, like a widow in her weeds. It was all in vain that he tried to
impress on her the diffic