"He went to buy your breakfast, did he not? And he told you to come and look for me here, I suppose?" Claude looked at his brother and hesitated. Then he exclaimed: "Papa has gone, I say. He jumped from the bed, put his things in his trunk, and then he carried his trunk downstairs and put it on a carriage. We saw him--he has gone!" Gervaise was kneeling, tying the boy's shoe. She rose slowly with a very white face and with her hands pressed to either temple, as if she were afraid of her head cracking open. She could say nothing but the same words over and over again: "Great God! Great God! Great God!" Mme Boche, in her turn, interrogated the child eagerly, for she was charmed at finding herself an actor, as it were, in this drama. "Tell us all about it, my dear. He locked the door, did he? And then he told you to bring the key here?" And then, lowering her voice, she whispered in the child's ear: "Was there a lady in the carriage?" she asked. The child looked troubled for a moment but speedily began his story again with a triumphant air. "He jumped off the bed, put his things in the trunk, and he went away." Then as Mme Boche made no attempt to detain him, he drew his brother to the faucet, where the two amused themselves in making the water run. Gervaise could not weep. She felt as if she were stifling. She covered her face with her hands and turned toward the wall. A sharp, nervous trembling shook her from head to foot. An occasional sobbing sigh or, rather, gasp escaped from her lips, while she pressed her clenched hands more tightly on her eyes, as if to increase the darkness of the abyss in which she felt herself to have fallen. "Come! Come, my child!" muttered Mme Boche. "If you knew! If you only knew all!" answered Gervaise. "Only this very morning he made me carry my shawl and my chemises to the Mont-de-Piete, and that was the money he had for the carriage." And the tears rushed to her eyes. The recollection of her visit to the pawnbroker's, of her hasty return with the money in her hand, seemed to let loose the sobs that strangled her and was the one drop too much. Tears streamed from her eyes and poured down her face. She did not think of wiping them away. "Be reasonable, child! Be quiet," whispered Mme Boche. "They are all looking at you. Is it possible you can care so much for any man? You love him still, although such a little while ago you pretended you did not care for him, and you cry as if your heart would break! Oh lord, what fools we women are!" Then in a maternal tone she added: