him from her, carried him away, and had
hidden him. All she knew was that he had been brought up by some peasants
in Normandy, that he had become a peasant himself, had married well, and
that his father, whose name he did not know, had settled a handsome sum
of money on him.

How often during the last forty years had she wished to go and see him
and to embrace him! She could not imagine to herself that he had grown!
She always thought of that small human atom which she had held in her
arms and pressed to her bosom for a day.

How often she had said to M. d'Apreval: "I cannot bear it any longer; I
must go and see him."

But he had always stopped her and kept her from going. She would be
unable to restrain and to master herself; their son would guess it and
take advantage of her, blackmail her; she would be lost.

"What is he like?" she said.

"I do not know. I have not seen him again, either."

"Is it possible? To have a son and not to know him; to be afraid of him
and to reject him as if he were a disgrace! It is horrible."

They went along the dusty road, overcome by the scorching sun, and
continually ascending that interminable hill.

"One might take it for a punishment," she continued; "I have never had
another child, and I could no longer resist the longing to see him, which
has possessed me for forty years. You men cannot understand that. You
must remember that I shall not live much longer, and suppose I should
never see him, never have seen him! . . . Is it possible? How could I
wait so long? I have thought about him every day since, and what a
terrible existence mine has been! I have never awakened, never, do you
understand, without my first thoughts being of him, of my child. How is
he? Oh, how guilty I feel toward him! Ought one to fear what the world
may say in a case like this? I ought to have left everything to go after
him, to bring him up and to show my love for him. I should certainly have
been much happier, but I did not dare, I was a coward. How I have
suffered! Oh, how those poor, abandoned children must hate their
mothers!"

She stopped suddenly, for she was choked by her sobs. The whole valley
was deserted and silent in the dazzling light and the overwhelming heat,
and only the grasshoppers uttered their shrill, continuous chirp among
the sparse yellow grass on both sides of the road.

"Sit down a little," he said.

She allowed herself to be led to the side of the ditch and sank down wi