nd the door was his mother who had
heard everything and was waiting.

What was she doing? Not a movement, not a shudder, not a breath, not a
sigh revealed the presence of a living creature behind that panel. Could
she have run away? But how? If she had run away--she must have jumped
out of the window into the street. A shock of terror roused him--so
violent and imperious that he drove the door in rather than opened it,
and flung himself into the bed-room.

It was apparently empty, lighted by a single candle standing on the
chest of drawers.

Jean flew to the window; it was shut and the shutters bolted. He looked
about him, peering into the dark corners with anxious eyes, and he then
noticed that the bed-curtains were drawn. He ran forward and opened
them. His mother was lying on the bed, her face buried in the pillow
which she had pulled up over her ears that she might hear no more.

At first he thought she had smothered herself. Then, taking her by the
shoulders, he turned her over without her leaving go of the pillow,
which covered her face, and in which she had set her teeth to keep
herself from crying out.

But the mere touch of this rigid form, of those arms so convulsively
clinched, communicated to him the shock of her unspeakable torture. The
strength and determination with which she clutched the linen case full
of feathers with her hands and teeth, over her mouth and eyes and ears,
that he might neither see her nor speak to her, gave him an idea, by the
turmoil it roused in him, of the pitch suffering may rise to, and his
heart, his simple heart, was torn with pity. He was no judge, not he;
not even a merciful judge; he was a man full of weakness and a son full
of love. He remembered nothing of what his brother had told him;
he neither reasoned nor argued, he merely laid his two hands on his
mother's inert body, and not being able to pull the pillow away, he
exclaimed, kissing her dress:

"Mother, mother, my poor mother, look at me!"

She would have seemed to be dead but that an almost imperceptible
shudder ran through all her limbs, the vibration of a strained cord. And
he repeated:

"Mother, mother, listen to me. It is not true. I know that it is not
true."

A spasm seemed to come over her, a fit of suffocation; then she suddenly
began to sob into the pillow. Her sinews relaxed, her rigid muscles
yielded, her fingers gave way and left go of the linen; and he uncovered
her face.

She was pale, qui