eet and fragile
creature before her eyes. She thinks she sees it, she does see it,
complete, living, joyous, with its delicate hands, its round head, its
pure lips, its serene eyes whose white is blue. If it is in winter, it
is yonder, crawling on the carpet, it is laboriously climbing upon an
ottoman, and the mother trembles lest it should approach the fire. If it
is summer time, it crawls about the yard, in the garden, plucks up the
grass between the paving-stones, gazes innocently at the big dogs, the
big horses, without fear, plays with the shells, with the flowers, and
makes the gardener grumble because he finds sand in the flower-beds and
earth in the paths. Everything laughs, and shines and plays around it,
like it, even the breath of air and the ray of sun which vie with each
other in disporting among the silky ringlets of its hair. The shoe shows
all this to the mother, and makes her heart melt as fire melts wax.

But when the child is lost, these thousand images of joy, of charms, of
tenderness, which throng around the little shoe, become so many
horrible things. The pretty broidered shoe is no longer anything but an
instrument of torture which eternally crushes the heart of the mother.
It is always the same fibre which vibrates, the tenderest and most
sensitive; but instead of an angel caressing it, it is a demon who is
wrenching at it.

One May morning, when the sun was rising on one of those dark blue skies
against which Garofolo loves to place his Descents from the Cross, the
recluse of the Tour-Roland heard a sound of wheels, of horses and irons
in the Place de Greve. She was somewhat aroused by it, knotted her hair
upon her ears in order to deafen herself, and resumed her contemplation,
on her knees, of the inanimate object which she had adored for fifteen
years. This little shoe was the universe to her, as we have already
said. Her thought was shut up in it, and was destined never more to quit
it except at death. The sombre cave of the Tour-Roland alone knew how
many bitter imprecations, touching complaints, prayers and sobs she had
wafted to heaven in connection with that charming bauble of rose-colored
satin. Never was more despair bestowed upon a prettier and more graceful
thing.

It seemed as though her grief were breaking forth more violently than
usual; and she could be heard outside lamenting in a loud and monotonous
voice which rent the heart.

"Oh my daughter!" she said, "my daughter, my po