his affairs, but did not dare to ask the question she had
asked de Gery: "Why didn't you bring me my little grandsons?"--But he
broached the subject himself.

"They're at boarding-school, mamma; as soon as the vacation comes, I'll
send them to you with Bompain. You remember him, don't you, Bompain
Jean-Baptiste? And you shall keep them two whole months. They'll come
to you to have you tell them fine stories, they'll go to sleep with
their heads on your apron, like this--"

And he himself, placing his curly head, heavy as lead, on the old
woman's knees, recalling the happy evenings of his childhood when he
went to sleep that way if he were allowed to do so, if his older
brother's head did not take up all the room--he enjoyed, for the first
time since his return to France, a few moments of blissful repose,
outside of his tumultuous artificial life, pressed against that old
motherly heart which he could hear beating regularly, like the pendulum
of the century-old clock standing in a corner of the room, in the
profound silence of the night, which one can feel in the country,
hovering over the boundless expanse. Suddenly the same long sigh, as of
a child who has fallen asleep sobbing, was repeated at the farther end
of the room.

"Is that--?"

"Yes," she said, "I have him sleep here. He might need me in the
night."

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

"Come."

The old woman rose, took her lamp, led the way gravely to the alcove,
where she softly drew aside the long curtain and motioned to her son to
come, without making a noise.

He was asleep. And it was certain that something lived in him that was
not there the day before, for, instead of the flaccid immobility in
which he was mired all day, he was shaken at that moment by violent
tremors, and on his expressionless, dead face there was a wrinkle of
suffering life, a contraction as of pain. Jansoulet, profoundly moved,
gazed at that thin, wasted, earth-colored face, on which the beard,
having appropriated all the vitality of the body, grew with surprising
vigor; then he stooped, placed his lips on the forehead moist with
perspiration, and, feeling that he started, he said in a low tone,
gravely, respectfully, as one addresses the head of the family:

"Good-evening, Aine."

Perhaps the imprisoned mind heard him in the depths of its dark,
degrading purgatory. But the lips moved and a long groan made answer; a
far-off wail, a despairing appeal caused th