essing it to her affectionate
heart. Her son Charles could do no more for them, she said; perhaps he
might be able to give them a five-franc piece now and again, but even
that wasn't certain. It was of no use for her to go back to her old
calling as a seamstress, she had lost all practice of it. And it would
even be difficult for her to earn anything as charwoman, for she had that
infant on her hands as well as her infirm husband--a big child, whom she
would have to wash and feed. And so what would become of the three of
them? She couldn't tell; but it made her shudder, however brave and
motherly she tried to be.

For their part, Pierre and Thomas quivered with compassion, particularly
when they saw big tears coursing down the cheeks of the wretched,
stricken Toussaint, as he sat quite motionless in that little and still
cleanly home of toil and want. The poor man had listened to his wife, and
he looked at her and at the infant now sleeping in her arms. Voiceless,
unable to cry his woe aloud, he experienced the most awful anguish. What
dupery his long life of labour had been! how frightfully unjust it was
that all his efforts should end in such sufferings! how exasperating it
was to feel himself powerless, and to see those whom he loved and who
were as innocent as himself suffer and die by reason of his own suffering
and death! Ah! poor old man, cripple that he was, ending like some beast
of burden that has foundered by the roadside--that goal of labour! And it
was all so revolting and so monstrous that he tried to put it into words,
and his desperate grief ended in a frightful, raucous grunt.

"Be quiet, don't do yourself harm!" concluded Madame Toussaint. "Things
are like that, and there's no mending them."

Then she went to put the child to bed again, and on her return, just as
Thomas and Pierre were about to speak to her of Toussaint's employer, M.
Grandidier, a fresh visitor arrived. Thereupon the others decided to
wait.

The new comer was Madame Chretiennot, Toussaint's other sister, eighteen
years younger than himself. Her husband, the little clerk, had compelled
her to break off almost all intercourse with her relatives, as he felt
ashamed of them; nevertheless, having heard of her brother's misfortune,
she had very properly come to condole with him. She wore a gown of cheap
flimsy silk, and a hat trimmed with red poppies, which she had freshened
up three times already; but in spite of this display her appear