Jules, seated at supper between his mother and sister and holding their hands in his, shared in their depression. In order to turn their thoughts into another channel, he asked his mother to tell one of those stories with which she used to amuse his childhood. "It would give me," said he, "yet another memory of the tenderest of mothers to take with me to Europe." "I can refuse my boy nothing," said Madame D'Haberville; and she began the following story: "A mother had an only child, a little girl, fair as a lily, whose great blue eyes wandered from her mother to heaven and back from heaven to her mother, only to fix themselves on heaven at last. How proud and happy was this loving mother when every one praised the beauty of her child! Her cheeks like the rose just blown, her tresses fair and soft as the beaten flax and falling over her shoulders in gracious waves! Immeasurably happy was this good mother. "At last she lost the child she idolized; and, like Rachel, she would not be comforted. She passed her days in the cemetery embracing the little grave. Mad with grief, she kept calling to the child with ceaseless pleadings: "'My darling! my darling! listen to your mother, who is come to carry you to your own bed, where you shall sleep so warmly! Oh, how cold you must be under the wet sod!' "She kept her ear close to the earth, as if she expected a response. She trembled at every slightest noise, and sobbed to discover that it was but the murmur of the weeping willow moved by the breeze. The passers-by used to say: 'This grass, so incessantly watered by her weeping, should be always green; but her tears are so bitter that they wither it, even like the fierce sun of midday after a heavy shower.' "She wept beside a brook where the little one had been accustomed to play with pebbles, and in whose pure stream she had so often washed the little feet. The passers-by used to say: "'This mother sheds so many tears that she swells the current of the stream!' "She nursed her grief in every room wherein the little one had played. She opened the trunk in which she kept religiously all the child's belongings--its clothes, its playthings, the little gold-lined cup of silver from which she had last given it to drink. Passionately she kissed the little shoes, and her sobs would have melted a heart of steel. "She went continually to the village church to pray, to implore God to work one miracle in her behalf, and give her back her child. And the voice of God seemed to answer her: "'Like David you shall go to her, but she shall not return to you.' "Then she would cry: "'When, Lord, when shall such joy be mine?' "She threw herself down before the image of the blessed Virgin, our Lady of Sorrows; and it seemed to her that the eyes of the Madonna rested upon her sadly, and that she read in them these words: "'Endure with patience, even as I have done, O daughter of Eve, till the day when your mourning shall be turned into gladness.'