"Listen: I am well off he has left me plenty of means. I don't want you to have anything to complain about--" But she quickly interrupted him. "Oh, Monsieur Cesar, Monsieur Cesar, not to-day. I am cut to the heart--another time--another day. No, not to-day. If I accept, listen! 'Tis not for myself--no, no, no, I swear to you. 'Tis for the child. Besides this provision will be put to his account." Thereupon, Cesar scared, divined the truth, and stammering: "So then--'tis his--the child?" "Why, yes," she said. And Hautot, Junior, gazed at his brother with a confused emotion, intense and painful. After a lengthened silence, for she had begun to weep afresh, Cesar, quite embarrassed, went on: "Well, then, Mam'zelle Donet I am going. When would you wish to talk this over with me?" She exclaimed: "Oh! no, don't go! don't go. Don't leave me all alone with Emile. I would die of grief. I have no longer anyone, anyone but my child. Oh! what wretchedness, what wretchedness. Mousieur Cesar! Stop! Sit down again. You will say something more to me. You will tell me what he was doing over there all the week." And Cesar resumed his seat, accustomed to obey. She drew over another chair for herself in front of the stove, where the dishes had all this time been simmering, took Emile upon her knees, and asked Cesar a thousand questions about his father with reference to matters of an intimate nature, which made him feel without reasoning on the subject, that she had loved Hautot with all the strength of her frail woman's heart. And, by the natural concatenation of his ideas--which were rather limited in number--he recurred once more to the accident, and set about telling the story over again with all the same details. When he said: "He had a hole in his stomach--you could put your two fists into it." She gave vent to a sort of shriek, and the tears gushed forth again from her eyes. Then seized by the contagion of her grief, Cesar began to weep, too, and as tears always soften the fibers of the heart, he bent over Emile whose forehead was close to his own mouth, and kissed him. The mother, recovering her breath, murmured: "Poor lad, he is an orphan now!" "And so am I," said Cesar. And they ceased to talk. But suddenly the practical instinct of the housewife, accustomed to be thoughtful about many things, revived in the young woman's breast. "You have perhaps taken nothing all the morning, Monsieur Cesar." "No, Mam'zelle." "Oh! you must be hungry. You will eat a morsel." "Thanks," he said, "I am not hungry; I have had too much trouble." She replied: "In spite of sorrow, we must live. You will not refuse to let me get something for you! And then you will remain a little longer. When you are gone, I don't know what will become of me."