The wound dealt her by her childlessness had always remained open. She
and her husband were now growing old in bitter solitude in three little
rooms overlooking a courtyard in the Rue de Lille. In this retirement
they subsisted on the salary which she, the wife, received as a
lady-delegate, joined to what they had been able to save of their
original fortune. The former fan-painter of triumphant mien was now
completely blind, a mere thing, a poor suffering thing, whom his wife
seated every morning in an armchair where she still found him in the
evening when she returned home from her incessant peregrinations through
the frightful misery of guilty mothers and martyred children. He could no
longer eat, he could no longer go to bed without her help, he had only
her left him, he was her child as he would say at times with a despairing
irony which made them both weep.
A child? Ah, yes! she had ended by having one, and it was he! An old
child, born of disaster; one who appeared to be eighty though he was less
than fifty years old, and who amid his black and ceaseless night ever
dreamt of sunshine during the long hours which he was compelled to spend
alone.
Pages:
600
601
602
603
604
605
606
607
608
609
610
611
612
613
614
615
616
617
618
619
620
621
622
623
624