some time and with eyes full of tears murmured several times: "Poor little devil!" I burst into uncontrollable tears when I saw the good curé cry, for I did not want to reconcile myself to the thought that my mother was dead and never again would come back. During her illness I was forbidden to go into her room, and now she was gone without having let me embrace her! . . . Could she have really deserted me that way? . . . When I was about seven years old and was well she had agreed to re-admit me into her life. It was from this time on that I understood that I had a mother and that I adored her. My sorrowing mother was represented to me by her two eyes, her two large round eyes, fixed, with rings of red around them, which always shed tears without moving the eyelids, which shed tears as does a rain cloud or a fountain. All at once I felt a keen sorrow at the grief of my mother, and it is through this grief that I awoke to life. I did not know what she suffered from, but I knew that her malady must have been horrible; I knew that from the way she used to embrace me. She had fits of tenderness which used to frighten me and which inspire me with fear even now. As she clasped my head, squeezed my neck and moved her lips over my forehead, my cheeks, my mouth, her frenzied kisses often passed into bites, similar to the caresses of a beast; into her embraces she put all the true passion of a lover, as if I had been the adored chimerical being of her dreams, the being that never came, the being whom her soul and her body so ardently desired. Was it possible then that she was dead?
Every evening, before going to bed, I fervently entreated the beautiful image of the Virgin to whom I addressed my prayers: "Holy Virgin, please grant my dear mother good health and a long life." But one morning my father, silent and pale, accompanied the
