have not found him. I am waiting at the door; I do not wish to come in at this hour.»

And on the same sheet I wrote:

«Jean has not returned. You must find him.»

And I passed the whole night waiting in my chair. I came near to losing my reason; I longed to scream, to run, to roll upon the ground — yet I never stirred, but waited on. What was going to happen? I tried to know, to divine it; but I could foresee nothing, for all my efforts and the torments of my soul. And then I feared the two of them might meet. What could he do? What would my son do? Here I fell prey to fearful doubts and killing surmises! You surely understand that state well — do you not, sir?

My maid, no doubt, thought I had lost my wits. She knew nothing of what had happened, and she kept coming near me without cease, but I drove her off again and again with a word or a sign. At last she fetched me the doctor, who found me in the grip of an acute nervous seizure. They put me to bed, and I was stricken with brain fever.

When I came to myself, after a long oblivion, I saw... my lover... alone beside the bed. I cried out: «My son! Where is my son?» He did not answer. Then I went on:

— «He is dead... dead... Did he kill himself?»

And he answered:

— No! No! I swear it to you. But we could not find him, for all our efforts.

Then of a sudden I felt myself nigh to bursting with rage — a man may be seized by a strange, insane anger such as came over me then — and I pronounced a stern sentence, saying to him:

— I forbid you absolutely to return here or ever to see me again unless you find my son. Go from me at once!

He went out; and from that day, sir, my eye has not fallen upon either of them — and so have I lived these twenty years!

Can you conceive it? You grasp, no doubt, the full measure of this merciless punishment, this slow, unbroken pain, this waiting that has no end. No end... No!... It has an end, praise be. I shall reach it soon, for I am going to die. Yes! I shall die before time ever grants me the sight of either of them again!...

But my friend has never ceased writing to me, every day, for twenty years; yet I have never once

consented to receive him, even for a single second, for it seemed to me that in the very second my friend returned here, I should see my son appear before me. My son!... My son!... Is he dead? Or is he alive? Perhaps he is out there beyond the great seas, in a country so distant that I cannot even learn its name. Does he think of me?... Ah! If only he knew! How cruel children are! Did he understand what pain he condemned me to — into what despair and torment he cast me, in my lifetime and in the springtime of my years, down to the end of my days — I, his mother, who loved him with all the force there is in mothers' love? How cruel he is! Tell me, I beg you!

You will recount all this to him, sir, and I pray you repeat to him my last words:

— «Be, my son, my dear one, my beloved boy, less harsh toward the poor creatures of this world. Life is hard, and savage! Think, my dear son, of your mother's life — your unhappy mother's — from the day you left her.

Forgive her, my beloved son, and greet her now, today, when she has died, for she has met the harshest of punishments.»

My interlocutress panted and trembled, as though she were speaking to her son standing there before her. Then she added:

— «You will tell him also, sir, that I never again saw... the other.»

And after she had ceased speaking, she resumed in a faint, broken voice:

— I beg you, sir, to leave me now. I wish to breathe my last alone, since the two of them are far away.

Here Monsieur Le Brument added:

— «And I came out of her house, brothers, sobbing like a small child, so that the coachman looked at me more than once in astonishment and wonder. Nor is this tragedy the only one of its kind: the like of it is repeated many a time in our world, every day!

And to this day I have not found that son... the son... You are free to think as you will; but I — I say of this son: the criminal.»

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