“All right, my girl, all right. You are all of you less stupid than one
would imagine, all the same. And how old is he now, Florentin?”
She replied:
“He is now twelve. He will make his first communion in the spring.”
“That is splendid. And since then you have carried on your business
conscientiously?”
She sighed in a resigned manner.
“I must do what I can.”
But a loud noise just then coming from the room itself made me start up
with a bound. It sounded like some one falling and picking themselves up
again by feeling along the wall with their hands.
I had seized the candle and was looking about me, terrified and furious.
She had risen also and was trying to hold me back to stop me, murmuring:
“That's nothing, my dear, I assure you it's nothing.”
But I had discovered what direction the strange noise came from. I
walked straight towards a door hidden at the head of the bed and I
opened it abruptly and saw before me, trembling, his bright, terrified
eyes opened wide at sight of me, a little pale, thin boy seated beside a
large wicker chair off which he had fallen.
As soon as he saw me he began to cry. Stretching out his arms to his
mother, he cried:
“It was not my fault, mamma, it was not my fault. I was asleep, and I
fell off. Do not scold me, it was not my fault.”