ish, the longing for
death, so unmistakably written on her pale face the other morning, are
still visible there; but they are softened, resigned. The woman Delobelle
knows that by waiting a little, yes, a very little time, she will have
nothing more to wish for.

The doctors declare that she is dying of pneumonia; she must have
contracted it in her wet clothes. The doctors are mistaken; it is not
pneumonia. Is it her love, then, that is killing her? No. Since that
terrible night she no longer thinks of Frantz, she no longer feels that
she is worthy to love or to be loved. Thenceforth there is a stain upon
her spotless life, and it is of the shame of that and of nothing else
that she is dying.

Mamma Delobelle sits by Desiree's bed, working by the light from the
window, and nursing her daughter. From time to time she raises her eyes
to contemplate that mute despair, that mysterious disease, then hastily
resumes her work; for it is one of the hardest trials of the poor that
they can not suffer at their ease.

Mamma Delobelle had to work alone now, and her fingers had not the
marvellous dexterity of Desiree's little hands; medicines were dear, and
she would not for anything in the world have interfered with one of "the
father's" cherished habits. And so, at whatever hour the invalid opened
her eyes, she would see her mother, in the pale light of early morning,
or under her night lamp, working, working without rest.

Between two stitches the mother would look up at her child, whose face
grew paler and paler:

"How do you feel?"

"Very well," the sick girl would reply, with a faint, heartbroken smile,
which illumined her sorrowful face and showed all the ravages that had
been wrought upon it, as a sunbeam, stealing into a poor man's lodging,
instead of brightening it, brings out more clearly its cheerlessness and
nudity.

The illustrious Delobelle was never there. He had not changed in any
respect the habits of a strolling player out of an engagement. And yet he
knew that his daughter was dying: the doctor had told him so. Moreover,
it had been a terrible blow to him, for, at heart, he loved his child
dearly; but in that singular nature the most sincere and the most genuine
feelings adopted a false and unnatural mode of expression, by the same
law which ordains that, when a shelf is placed awry, nothing that you
place upon it seems to stand straight.

Delobelle's natural tendency was, before everything, to air his