;--never in her life had she rested
her back against the back of a chair or sat in an armchair. He called
her Francoise and she called him Monsieur Paul. They were old friends.
And what do you suppose they were talking about? Of her grandchildren,
_pardi!_ of Bernard's three boys whom she did not know, whom she would
have loved so dearly to know.

"Ah! Monsieur Paul, if you knew how I long for them! I should have been
so happy if he had brought me my three little ones instead of all these
fine gentlemen. Just think, I have never seen them, except in those
pictures yonder. Their mother frightens me a bit, she's a great lady
out-and-out, a Demoiselle Afchin. But the children, I'm sure they're
not little coxcombs, but would be very fond of their old _granny_.
It would seem to me as if it was their father a little boy again, and
I'd give them what I didn't give the father--for, you see, Monsieur
Paul, parents aren't always just. They have favorites. But God is just.
You ought to see how He deals with the faces that you paint and fix up
the best, to the injury of the others. And the favoritism of the old
people often does harm to the young."

She sighed as she glanced in the direction of the great alcove, from
which, through the high lambrequins and falling draperies, issued at
intervals a long, shuddering breath like the moan of a sleeping child
who has been whipped and has cried bitterly.

A heavy step on the stairs, an unmelodious but gentle voice, saying in
a low tone: "It's I--don't move,"--and Jansoulet appeared. As everybody
had gone to bed at the chateau, he, knowing his mother's habits and
that hers was always the last light to be extinguished in the house,
had come to see her, to talk with her a little, to exchange the real
greeting of the heart which they had been unable to exchange in the
presence of others. "Oh! stay, my dear Paul; we don't mind you." And,
becoming a child once more in his mother's presence, he threw his whole
long body on the floor at her feet, with cajoling words and gestures
really touching to behold. She was very happy too to have him by her
side, but she was a little embarrassed none the less, looking upon him
as an all-powerful, strange being, exalting him in her artless
innocence to the level of an Olympian encompassed by thunder-bolts and
lightning-flashes, possessing the gift of omnipotence. She talked to
him, inquired if he was still satisfied with his friends, with the
condition of