e manager's hand sketched
programmes, announcements; while Bois l'Hery slept, his hands in his
pockets, his chair tilted back, his cigar sunk in the corner of
his sneering mouth; and the Marquis de Monpavon, always on his best
behaviour, straightened his shirt-front to keep himself awake.

De Gery had left them early. He had sought refuge beside the old
mother--who had known him as a boy, him and his brothers--in the humble
parlour of the brightly decorated, white-curtained house, where the
Nabob's mother tried to perpetuate her humble past with the help of a
few relics saved from its wreck.

Paul chatted quietly with the fine old woman, admiring her severe and
regular features, her white hair massed together like the hemp of her
distaff, as she sat holding herself straight in her seat--never in her
life having leaned back or sat in an arm-chair--a little green shawl
folded tightly across her flat breast. He called her Francoise, and she
called him M. Paul. They were old friends. And guess what they talked
about? Of her grandchildren, of Bernard's three sons, whom she did not
know and so much longed to know.

"Ah, M. Paul, if you knew how I long to see them! I should have been
so happy if he had brought them, my three little ones, instead of these
fine gentlemen. Think, I have never seen them, only their portraits
which are over there. I am a little afraid of their mother, she is quite
a great lady, a Miss Afchin. But them, the children, I am sure they are
not proud, and they would love their old granny. It would be like having
their father a little boy again, and I would give to them what I did not
give to him. You see, M. Paul, parents are not always just. They have
their favourites. But God is just, he is. The ones that are most petted
and spoiled at the expense of the others, you should see what he does to
them for you! And the favour of the old often brings misfortune to the
young!"

She sighed, looking towards the large recess from behind the curtains of
which there came, at intervals, a long sobbing breath like the sleeping
wail of a beaten child who has cried bitterly.

A heavy step on the staircase, a loud, sweet voice saying, very softly,
"It is I; don't move," and Jansoulet appeared. He knew his mother's
habits, how her lamp was the last to go out, so when every one in the
castle was in bed, he came to see her, to chat with her for a little, to
rejoice her heart with an affection he could not show before