the others.
"Oh, stay, my dear Paul; we don't mind you," and once more a child in
his mother's presence, with loving gestures and words that were really
touching, the huge man threw himself on the ground at her feet. She was
very happy to have him there, so dearly near, but she was just a little
shy. She looked upon him as an all-powerful being, extraordinary,
raising him, in her simplicity, to the greatness of an Olympian
commanding the thunder and lightning. She spoke to him, asking about his
friends, his business, but not daring to put the question she had asked
de Gery: "Why haven't my grandchildren come?" But he spoke of them
himself. "They are at school, mother. Whenever the holidays begin they
shall be sent with Bompain. You remember Jean-Baptiste Bompain? And you
shall keep them for two long months. They will come to you and make you
tell them stories, and they will go to sleep with their heads on your
lap--there, like that."

And he himself, putting his heavy, woolly head on her knee, remembered
the happy evenings of his childhood when he would go to sleep so, if she
would let him, and his brother had not taken up all the room. He tasted
for the first time since his return to France a few minutes of delicious
peace away from his restless and artificial life, as he lay pressed to
his old mother's heart, in the deep silence of night and of the country
which one feels hovering over him in limitless space; the only sounds
the beating of that old faithful heart and the swing of the pendulum of
the ancient clock in the corner. Suddenly came the same long sigh, as of
a child fallen asleep sobbing. Jansoulet lifted his head and looked at
his mother, and softly asked: "Is it--?" "Yes," she said, "I make him
sleep there. He might need me in the night."

"I would like to see him, to embrace him."

"Come, then." She rose very gravely, took the lamp and went to the
alcove, of which she softly drew the large curtain, making a sign to her
son to draw near quietly.

He was sleeping. And no doubt something lived in him while he slept that
was not there when he waked, for instead of the flaccid immobility in
which he was congealed all day, he was now shaken by sudden starts, and
on the inexpressive and death-like face there were lines of pain and the
contractions of suffering life. Jansoulet, much affected, looked long
at those wasted features, faded and sickly, where the beard grew with a
surprising vigour. Then he bent do