Volume VIII Part 47 (1/2)
”'He did go away
”'I have never seen one or the other of them since, monsieur, and thus I have lived for the last twenty years
”'Can you iine what all this meant to me? Can you understand this monstrous punishment, this slow perpetual laceration of a ? Endless, did I say? No: it is about to end, for I a either of them--either one or the other!
”'He--the man I loved--has written to me every day for the last twenty years; and I--I have never consented to see hi that, if he caain make his appearance! Ah! ? Where is he hiding? Over there, perhaps, at the other side of the ocean, in some country so far away that even its very name is unknown to me! Does he ever think of me?
Ah! if he only kne cruel children are! Did he understand to what frightful suffering he condemned me, into what depths of despair, into what tortures, he castto die--me, his mother, who loved him with all the violence of a mother's love! Oh! isn't it cruel, cruel?
”'You will tell him all this, monsieur--will you not? You will repeat for him my last words:
”'My child, my dear, dear child, be less harsh towards poor woh in its dealings with them My dear son, think of what the existence of your poor mother has been ever since the day when you left her My dear child, forgive her, and love her, now that she is dead, for she has had to endure the htful penance ever inflicted on a wo, as if she had addressed the last words to her son and as if he stood by her bedside
”Then she added:
”'You will tell hiain saw--the other'
”Once , then, in a broken voice she said:
”'Leaveof you I want to die all alone, since they are not with me'”
Maitre Le Bru like a fool, so vehemently, indeed, that my coachman turned round to stare at me
”And to think that, every day, heaps of dra enacted all around us!
”I have not found the son--that son--well, say what you like about him, but I call hiuests slowly entered the dining-rooan to attend on them in a leisurely fashi+on so as to enable those ere late to arrive, and so as to avoid bringing back the dishes; and the old bathers, the _habitues_, those whose season was advancing, gazed with interest towards the door, whenever it opened, with a desire to see new faces appearing
This is the principal distraction of health-resorts People look forward to the dinner-hour in order to inspect each day's new arrivals, to find out who they are, what they do, and what they think
A vague longing springs up in the s, for pleasant acquaintances, perhaps for love-adventures In this life of elbowings, not only those e have coers, assume an extreme importance Curiosity is aroused, sympathy is ready to exhibit itself, and sociability is the order of the day
We cherish antipathies for a week and friendshi+ps for a month; we see other people with different eyes e view theht about at health-resorts We discover inafter dinner, under the trees in the park where the generous spring bubbles up, a high intelligence and astonishi+ng otten these new friends, so fascinating e firstand serious ties more quickly than anywhere else People see each other every day; they becoinated isof the sweetness and self-abandon intimacies We cherish in after years the dear and tender memories of those first hours of friendshi+p, the h which we have been able to unveil a soul, of those first glances which interrogate and respond to the questions and secret thoughts which the mouth has not as yet uttered, the memory of that first cordial confidence, theour hearts to those who are willing to open theirs to us
And the melancholy of health-resorts, the monotony of days that are all alike, help from hour to hour in this rapid develop, as on every other evening, aited the appearance of strange faces