A look of great joy came over the child’s face. He raised himself on his mother’s arm and turned his head toward the two men who approached, questioning, for a moment, who it was by the side of his father; this gentleman in an overcoat, whose good, pleasant face he did not know. When they said to him: “It is Boum-Boum!” he slowly fell back on the pillow and remained there, his eyes fixed, his beautiful large, blue eyes, which looked beyond the walls of the little room, and were always seeking the spangles and the butterfly of Boum-Boum, like a lover who pursues his dream. “No,” replied the child with a voice which was no longer dry, but full of despair, “no, it is not Boum-Boum.” The clown, standing near the little bed, threw upon the child an earnest look, very grave, but of an inexpressible sweetness. He shook his head, looked at the anxious father, the grief-stricken mother, and said, smiling, “He is right, this is not Boum-Boum!” and then he went out. “I can not see him, I will never see Boum-Boum any more!” repeated the child, whose little voice spoke to the angels. “Boum-Boum is perhaps there, there, where little François will soon go.” And suddenly--it was only a half-hour since the clown had disappeared--the door opened quickly, and in his black, spangled clothes, his yellow cap on his head, the gilded butterfly on his breast and on his back, with a smile as big as the mouth of a money-box and a powdered face, Boum-Boum, the true Boum-Boum, the Boum-Boum of the circus, the Boum-Boum of the popular neighborhood, the Boum-Boum of little François--Boum-Boum appeared. Lying on his little white bed the child clapped his thin, little hands, laughing, crying, happy, saved, with a joy of life in his eyes, and cried “Bravo!” with his seven-year gaiety, which all at once kindled up like a match: “Boum-Boum! It is he, it is he, this time! Here is Boum-Boum! Long live Boum-Boum! Good-day, Boum-Boum.” And when the doctor came back, he found, seated by little François’s bedside, a clown with a pale face, who made the little one laugh again and again, and who said to the child while he was stirring a piece of sugar into a cup of medicine: “Thou knowest, if thou dost not drink, little François, Boum-Boum will not come back any more.” So the child drank. “Is it not good?” “Very good!--thanks, Boum-Boum!” “Doctor,” said the clown to the doctor, “do not be jealous--It seems to me that my grimaces will do him as much good as your prescriptions!” The father and the mother wept, but this time from joy. Until little François was on his feet again a carriage stopped every day before the dwelling of a workman in the street of the Abessess, at Montmartre, and a man got out with a gay powdered face, enveloped in an overcoat with the collar turned back, and underneath it one could see a clown’s costume. “What do I owe you, monsieur?” said Jacques, at last, to the master-clown when the child took his first walk, “for now I owe you something!”