was more cruel than all the rest, Jansoulet,
who had come to look for her, being anxious at her non-appearance,
suddenly stood beside her.

"Take my arm, mother. You must not stay here."

He spoke very loud, with a manner so composed and calm that all laughter
ceased, and the old woman, suddenly quieted, supported by the firm
pressure of that arm, clinging to which the last trembling of her
indignation vanished, left the palace between two respectful lines of
people. A sublime though rustic couple, the son's millions illumining
the mother's peasantry like the relics of a saint enclosed in a golden
shrine, they disappeared in the bright sunlight, in the splendor of the
gorgeous carriage, brutal irony in presence of that sore distress, a
striking example of the ghastly poverty of wealth.

They sat side by side on the back seat, for they dreaded to be seen, and
at first they did not speak. But as soon as the carriage had started, as
soon as they had left behind the sorrowful Calvary where his honor
remained on the gibbet, Jansoulet, at the end of his strength, laid his
head against his mother's shoulder, hid his face in a fold of the old
green shawl, and there, shedding hot tears, his whole body shaken by
sobs, the cry of his infancy came once more to his lips, his _patois_
wail when he was a little child: "Mamma! mamma!"

XXII.

PARISIAN DRAMAS.

"Que l'heure est donc breve
Qu'on passe en aimant!
C'est moins qu'un moment,
Un peu plus qu'un reve."[7]

In the half-light of the great salon clad in its summer garb, filled
with flowers, the plush furniture swathed in white covers, the
chandeliers draped in gauze, the shades lowered and the windows open,
Madame Jenkins sits at the piano, picking out the last production of the
fashionable musician of the day; a few sonorous chords accompany the
exquisite lines, a melancholy _Lied_ in unequal measures, which seems to
have been written for the serious sweetness of her voice and the anxious
state of her mind.

"Le temps nous enleve,
Notre enchantement,"[8]

sighs the poor woman, moved by the sound of her own lament; and while
the notes fly away through the courtyard of the mansion, tranquil as
usual, where the fountain is playing in the midst of a clump of
rhododendrons, the singer interrupts herself, her hands prolonging the
chord, her eyes fixed on the music, but her glance far, far away. The
doctor is absent. The interests of his business and his health ha