“Oh, yes, I know that you are everything that is good, and that you would have given him every copper. But I hesitated, I didn’t like to part with it; and now it will be a sorrow to me for the rest of my life. I shall always think that if I’d shared the fortune with him he wouldn’t have gone wrong a second time. Oh, yes; it’s my fault! It is I who have driven him to this.” Then Lisa, expostulating still more gently, assured him that he had nothing to blame himself for, and even expressed some pity for Florent. But he was really very culpable, she said, and if he had had more money he would probably have perpetrated greater follies. Gradually she gave her husband to understand that it was impossible matters could have had any other termination, and that now everything would go on much better. Quenu was still weeping, wiping his cheeks with his apron, trying to suppress his sobs to listen to her, and then breaking into a wilder fit of tears than before. His fingers had mechanically sought a heap of sausage-meat lying on the block, and he was digging holes in it, and roughly kneading it together. “And how unwell you were feeling, you know,” Lisa continued. “It was all because our life had got so shifted out of its usual course. I was very anxious, though I didn’t tell you so, at seeing you getting so low.” “Yes, wasn’t I?” he murmured, ceasing to sob for a moment. “And the business has been quite under a cloud this year. It was as though a spell had been cast on it. Come, now, don’t take on so; you’ll see that everything will look up again now. You must take care of yourself, you know, for my sake and your daughter’s. You have duties to us as well as to others, remember.” Quenu was now kneading the sausage-meat more gently. Another burst of emotion was thrilling him, but it was a softer emotion, which was already bringing a vague smile to his grief-stricken face. Lisa felt that she had convinced him, and she turned and called to Pauline, who was playing in the shop, and sat her on Quenu’s knee. “Tell your father, Pauline, that he ought not to give way like this. Ask him nicely not to go on distressing us so.” The child did as she was told, and their fat, sleek forms united in a general embrace. They all three looked at one another, already feeling cured of that twelve months’ depression from which they had but just emerged. Their big, round faces smiled, and Lisa softly repeated, “And after all, my dear, there are only we three, you know, only we three.”