e had just time to inquire:

"Well, what does the doctor say?"

The priest would reply:

"He has not yet given an opinion, madame."

But one evening the abbe replied: "Madame, your son has got the
small-pox."

She uttered a scream of terror and fled from the room.

When her maid came to her room the following morning she noticed at once
a strong odor of burnt sugar, and she found her mistress, with wide-open
eyes, her face pale from lack of sleep, and shivering with terror in her
bed.

As soon as the shutters were opened Mme. Herrnet asked:

"How is George?"

"Oh, not at all well to-day, madame."

She did not rise until noon, when she ate two eggs with a cup of tea,
as if she herself had been ill, and then she went out to a druggist's to
inquire about prophylactic measures against the contagion of small-pox.

She did not come home until dinner time, laden with medicine bottles,
and shut herself up at once in her room, where she saturated herself
with disinfectants.

The priest was waiting for her in the dining-room. As soon as she saw
him she exclaimed in a voice full of emotion:

"Well?"

"No improvement. The doctor is very anxious:"

She began to cry and could eat nothing, she was so worried.

The next day, as soon as it was light, she sent to inquire for her son,
but there was no improvement and she spent the whole day in her room,
where little braziers were giving out pungent odors. Her maid said also
that you could hear her sighing all the evening.

She spent a whole week in this manner, only going out for an hour or two
during the afternoon to breathe the air.

She now sent to make inquiries every hour, and would sob when the
reports were unfavorable.

On the morning of the eleventh day the priest, having been announced,
entered her room, his face grave and pale, and said, without taking the
chair she offered him:

"Madame, your son is very ill and wishes to see you."

She fell on her knees, exclaiming:

"Oh, my God! Oh, my God! I would never dare! My God! My God! Help me!"

The priest continued:

"The doctor holds out little hope, madame, and George is expecting you!"

And he left the room.

Two hours later as the young lad, feeling himself dying, again asked for
his mother, the abbe went to her again and found her still on her knees,
still weeping and repeating:

"I will not.... I will not.... I am too much afraid.... I will not...."

He tried to persuade her, to strengthen h