Suddenly I perceived behind a bit of wall a being, a kind of phantom,
like the spirit of this ancient and crumbling habitation.
I was taken aback with surprise, almost with fear, when I recognized the
old lady whom I had seen twice.
She was weeping, with big tears in her eyes, and held her handkerchief
in her hand.
I turned around to go away, when she spoke to me, apparently ashamed to
have been surprised in her grief.
“Yes, monsieur, I am crying. That does not happen often to me.”
“Pardon me, madame, for having disturbed you,” I stammered, confused,
not knowing what to say. “Some misfortune has doubtless come to you.”
“Yes. No--I am like a lost dog,” she murmured, and began to sob, with
her handkerchief over her eyes.
Moved by these contagious tears, I took her hand, trying to calm her.
Then brusquely she told me her history, as if no longer ably to bear her
grief alone.
“Oh! Oh! Monsieur--if you knew--the sorrow in which I live--in what
sorrow.
“Once I was happy. I have a house down there--a home. I cannot go back
to it any more; I shall never go back to it again, it is too hard to
bear.
“I have a son. It is he! it is he! Children don't know. Oh, one has
such a short time to live! If I should see him now I should perhaps
not recognize him. How I loved him? How I loved him! Even before he
was born, when I felt him move. And after that! How I have kissed and
caressed and cherished him! If you knew how many nights I have passed in
watching him sleep, and how many in thinking of him. I was crazy about
him. When he was eight years old his father sent him to boarding-school.
That was the end. He no longer belonged to me. Oh, heavens! He came to
see me every Sunday. That was all!
“He went to college in Paris. Then he came only four times a year,
and every time I was astonished to see how he had changed, to find him
taller without having seen him grow. They stole his childhood from me,
his confidence, and his love which otherwise would not have gone away
from me; they stole my joy in seeing him grow, in seeing him become a
little man.
“I saw him four times a year. Think of it! And at every one of his
visits his body, his eye, his movements, his voice his laugh, were no
longer the same, were no longer mine. All these things change so quickly
in a child; and it is so sad if one is not there to see them change; one
no longer recognizes him.
“One year he came with down on his cheek! He! my son! I was dumfounded
--would you believe it? I hardly dared to kiss him. Was it really he, my
little, little curly head of old, my dear; dear child, whom I had held
in his diapers or my knee, and who had nursed at my breast with his
little greedy lips--was it he, this tall, brown boy, who no longer knew
how to kiss me, who seemed to love me as a matter of duty, who called me
'mother' for the sake of politeness, and who kissed me on the forehead,
when I felt like crushing him in my arms?
“My husband died. Then my parents, and then my two sisters. When Death
enters a house it seems as if he were hurrying to do his utmost, so as
not to have to return for a long time after that. He spares only one or
two to mourn the others.
“I remained alone. My tall son was then studying law. I was hoping to
live and die near him, and I went to him so that we could live together.
But he had fallen into the ways of young men, and he gave me to
understand that I was in his way. So I left. I was wrong in doing so,
but I suffered too much in feeling myself in his way, I, his mother! And
I came back home.
“I hardly ever saw him again.
“He married. What a joy! At last we should be together for good. I
should have grandchildren. His wife was an Englishwoman, who took a
dislike to me. Why? Perhaps she thought that I loved him too much.
“Again I was obliged to go away. And I was alone. Yes, monsieur.
“Then he went to England, to live with them, with his wife's parents.
Do you understand? They have him--they have my son for themselves. They
have stolen him from me. He writes to me once a month. At first he came
to see me. But now he no longer comes.
“It is now four years since I saw him last. His face then was wrinkled
and his hair white. Was that possible? This man, my son, almost an old
man? My little rosy child of old? No doubt I shall never see him again.
“And so I travel about all the year. I go east and west, as you see,
with no companion.
“I am like a lost dog. Adieu, monsieur! don't stay here with me for it
hurts me to have told you all this.”
I went down the hill, and on turning round to glance back, I saw the
old woman standing on a broken wall, looking out upon the mountains, the
long valley and Lake Chambon in the distance.
And her skirt and the queer little shawl which she wore around her thin
shoulders were fluttering tike a flag in the wind.