for the unhappy mother seemed to recall him to a sense
of duty. "Scoundrel that I am!" he exclaimed, striking his forehead with
his clenched fist. "Why, I'm forgetting my own good mother!" And as his
task was now ended, he started off on the run, taking the shortest cut
to the Faubourg Saint-Denis. "Poor mother!" he said to himself as he
tore along, "what a night she must have had! She must have cried her
eyes out!"

He spoke the truth. The poor woman had passed a night of agony--counting
the hours, and trembling each time the door of the house opened,
announcing some tenant's return. And as morning approached, her anxiety
increased. "For her son would not have allowed her to remain in such
suspense," she said to herself, "unless he had met with some accident or
encountered some of his former friends--those detestable scamps who had
tried to make him as vile as themselves." Perhaps he had met his father,
Polyte Chupin, the man whom she still loved in spite of everything,
because he was her husband, but whom she judged, and whom indeed she
knew, to be capable of any crime. And of all misfortunes, it was an
accident, even a fatal accident, that she dreaded least. In her heroic
soul the voice of honor spoke even more loudly than the imperious
instinct of maternity; and she would rather have found her son lying
dead on the marble slabs of the Morgue than seated in the dock at the
Assize Court.

Her poor eyes were weary of weeping when she at last recognized Victor's
familiar step approaching down the passage. She hastily opened the door,
and as soon as she FELT that he was near her, for she could not see him,
she asked: "Where have you spent the night? Where have you come from?
What has happened?"

His only answer was to fling his arms round her neck, following alike
the impulse of his heart and the advice of experience, which told him
that this would be the best explanation he could give. Still it did not
prevent him from trying to justify himself, although he was careful not
to confess the truth, for he dreaded his mother's censure, knowing well
enough that she would be less indulgent than his own conscience.

"I believe you, my son," said the good woman, gravely; "you wouldn't
deceive me, I'm sure." And she added: "What reassured me, when you
kissed me, was that you hadn't been drinking."

Chupin did not speak a word; this confidence made him strangely uneasy.
"May I be hung," he thought, "if after this I ever do a