e Nabob's carriage waiting. As she passed, the
peasant recognised in one of the groups her enormous neighbour of the
gallery, with the pale man in spectacles who had attacked her son, who
was receiving all sorts of felicitation for his discourse. At the
name of Jansoulet, pronounced among mocking and satisfied sneers, she
stopped.

"At any rate," said a handsome man with a bad feminine face, "he has not
proved where our accusations were false."

The old woman, hearing that, wrenched herself through the crowd, and
facing Moessard said:

"What he did not say I will. I am his mother, and it is my duty to
speak."

She stopped to seize Le Merquier by the sleeve, who was escaping:

"Wicked man, you must listen, first of all. What have you got against my
child? Don't you know who he is? Wait a little till I tell you."

And turning to the journalist:

"I had two sons, sir."

Moessard was no longer there. She returned to Le Merquier: "Two sons,
sir." Le Merquier had disappeared.

"Oh, listen to me, some one, I beg," said the poor mother, throwing her
hands and her voice round her to assemble and retain her hearers; but
all fled, melted away, disappeared--deputies, reporters, unknown and
mocking faces to whom she wished at any cost to tell her story, careless
of the indifference where her sorrows and her joys fell, her pride and
maternal tenderness expressed in a tornado of feeling. And while she was
thus exciting herself and struggling--distracted, her bonnet awry--at
once grotesque and sublime, as are all the children of nature when
brought into civilization, taking to witness the honesty of her son
and the injustice of men, even the liveried servants, whose disdainful
impassibility was more cruel than all, Jansoulet appeared suddenly
beside her.

"Take my arm, mother. You must not stop there."

He said it in a tone so firm and calm that all the laughter ceased, and
the old woman, suddenly quieted, sustained by this solid hold, still
trembling a little with anger, left the palace between two respectful
rows. A dignified and rustic couple, the millions of the son gilding the
countrified air of the mother, like the rags of a saint enshrined in a
golden _chasse_--they disappeared in the bright sunlight outside, in the
splendour of their glittering carriage--a ferocious irony in their deep
distress, a striking symbol of the terrible misery of the rich.

They sat well back, for both feared to be seen, and hardly spoke