Short Fiction

was announced, entered her room, his face grave and pale, and declining the chair that she offered him, said:

“Madame, your son is very ill, and he wants to see you.”

She flung herself on her knees, crying:

“Oh, my God, oh, my God, I daren’t! My God, my God! help me!”

The priest answered:

“The doctor holds out very little hope, madame, and George is waiting for you.”

Then he went out.

Two hours later, as the boy, feeling himself near death, asked again for his mother, the abbé went back to her room and found her still on her knees, still weeping and repeating:

“I won’t.⁠ ⁠… I won’t.⁠ ⁠… I am too frightened⁠ ⁠… I won’t.⁠ ⁠…”

He tried to persuade her, to stiffen her resolution, to lead her out. He succeeded only in giving her a fit of hysteria which lasted for a long time and made her scream.

The doctor came again towards evening, was told of her cowardice and declared that he himself would fetch her, by persuasion or force. But when, after having exhausted all his arguments, he put his arm around her to carry her off to her son, she seized the door and clung to it so desperately that no one could tear her away. Then, released, she prostrated herself at the doctor’s feet, begging for pardon, and accusing herself of wickedness. She kept crying: “Oh, he’s not going to die, tell me he’s not going to die, I implore you, tell him that I love him, that I adore him.⁠ ⁠…”

The boy lay at the point of death. Realising that he only had a few moments left, he begged them to persuade his mother to say goodbye to him. With strange insight that the dying sometimes possess, he had realised the truth, divined it, and said: “If she is afraid to come in, just beg her to come along the balcony as far as my window so that at least I can see her and say goodbye to her by a look, since I may not kiss her.”

The doctor and the abbé went back once more to this woman. “You will run no risk at all,” they declared, “since there will be glass between you and him.”

She consented to come, covered her head, took a bottle of smelling-salts, made three steps along the balcony, then suddenly, hiding her face in her hands, she moaned: “No⁠ ⁠… no⁠ ⁠… I shall never dare to look at him⁠ ⁠… never⁠ ⁠… I’m too ashamed⁠ ⁠… I’m too afraid⁠ ⁠… no⁠ ⁠… I can’t.”

They tried to drag her along, but she held with both hands to the bars and uttered such wails that the people passing by in the street lifted their heads.

And the dying boy waited, his eyes turned towards this window, he waited, putting off death until he should have looked one last time on that gentle beloved face, his mother’s blessed face.

He waited for a long time, and night fell. Then he turned his face to the wall and never spoke again.

When day broke, he was dead. The next day, she was a madwoman.

Epiphany

“Ah!” said Captain the Comte de Garens, “I should think I do remember that Twelfth Night, during the war!

“I was a quartermaster in the Hussars in those days, and for the past fortnight I’d been wandering about scouting in front of a German advance-guard. The night before, we had sabred some Uhlans and lost three men; poor little Raudeville was one of them. You remember Joseph de Raudeville.

“Well, that day my captain ordered me to take ten men to go and occupy the village of Porterin and guard it all night. There had been five fights in three weeks in the place, and not twenty houses were left standing nor twelve people still dwelling in the damned wasps’ nest.

“So I took my ten men and went off at about four o’clock. It was five o’clock, and pitch-dark, when we reached the first ruins of Porterin. I called a halt and ordered Marchas⁠—you know, Pierre de Marchas, who married the Martel-Auvelin girl, the Marquis de Martel-Auvelin’s daughter⁠—to go on alone into the village and bring back a report.

“I had chosen only volunteers, all men of good family. In the army the men prefer not to be on familiar terms with bounders. Marchas was a live wire, as sly as a fox and as wily as a serpent. He could scent a Prussian like a dog a bone, could find food in a spot where we should have died of hunger without him, and could get information from anyone, always accurate, with incredible skill.

“He returned ten minutes later.

“ ‘All serene,’ he said; ‘There hasn’t been a Prussian in the place for three days. The village is a sinister place. I had a talk with a sister who is looking after four or five sick people in an abandoned convent.’

“I ordered my men forward, and we entered the main street. We caught vague glimpses, to right and left, of roofless walls hardly visible in the profound darkness. Here and there a light gleamed behind a window; a family, prompted by courage or necessity, had stayed to guard its barely standing home. Rain was beginning to fall, a thin, icy drizzle that froze before it wetted, as soon as it touched our coats. The horses stumbled over stones, beams, and articles of furniture. Marchas was our guide, walking at our head and leading his beast by the bridle.

“ ‘Where are you taking us?’ I asked him.

“ ‘I’ve got a good place,’ he replied.

“Soon he stopped in front of a small villa, still intact, and fast locked. It was right on the road, with a garden at the rear.

“Picking up a large stone by the entrance gate, Marchas smashed the lock; then he mounted the steps, broke in the front door with kicks and shoulder-thrusts, lit a candle-end that he always kept in his pocket, and preceded us into the pleasant and comfortable home of some wealthy private citizen. He guided us with marvellous assurance, as though he had lived in the