“‘Ah! well, yes, have no pity for me, be merciless to me!’ she cried. ‘But the children? Condemn your widow to live in a convent; I will obey you; I will do anything, anything that you bid me, to expiate the wrong I have done you, if that so the children may be happy! The children! Oh, the children!’ “‘I have only one child,’ said the Count, stretching out a wasted arm, in his despair, towards his son. “‘Pardon a penitent woman, a penitent woman!...’ wailed the Countess, her arms about her husband’s damp feet. She could not speak for sobbing; vague, incoherent sounds broke from her parched throat. “‘You dare to talk of penitence after all that you said to Ernest!’ exclaimed the dying man, shaking off the Countess, who lay groveling over his feet.--‘You turn me to ice!’ he added, and there was something appalling in the indifference with which he uttered the words. ‘You have been a bad daughter; you have been a bad wife; you will be a bad mother.’ “The wretched woman fainted away. The dying man reached his bed and lay down again, and a few hours later sank into unconsciousness. The priests came and administered the sacraments. “At midnight he died; the scene that morning had exhausted his remaining strength, and on the stroke of midnight I arrived with Daddy Gobseck. The house was in confusion, and under cover of it we walked up into the little salon adjoining the death-chamber. The three children were there in tears, with two priests, who had come to watch with the dead. Ernest came over to me, and said that his mother desired to be alone in the Count’s room. “‘Do not go in,’ he said; and I admired the child for his tone and gesture; ‘she is praying there.’ “Gobseck began to laugh that soundless laugh of his, but I felt too much touched by the feeling in Ernest’s little face to join in the miser’s sardonic amusement. When Ernest saw that we moved towards the door, he planted himself in front of it, crying out, ‘Mamma, here are some gentlemen in black who want to see you!’ “Gobseck lifted Ernest out of the way as if the child had been a feather, and opened the door.