whit as genteel as had the actresses at the _Gymnase_:

_But for the nonce, on mother's breast,
Sweet wee gallant, take thy rest._

Presently the vision changed; now her boy was standing up gowned
in Court, by his eloquence saving the life and honour of some
illustrious client:

_But for the nonce, on mother's breast,
Sweet wee pleader, take thy rest._

Presently again he was an officer under fire, in a brilliant
uniform, on a prancing charger, victorious in battle, like the
great Generals whose portraits she had seen one Sunday at Versailles:

_But for the nonce, on mother's breast,
Sweet wee general, take thy rest._

But when night was creeping into the room, a new picture would
dazzle her eyes, a picture this of other and incomparably greater
glories.

Proud in her motherhood, yet humble too at heart, she was gazing
from the dim recesses of a sanctuary at her son, her Jean, clad
in sacerdotal vestments, lifting the monstrance in the vaulted
choir censed by the beating wings of half-seen Cherubim. And she
would tremble awestruck as if she were the mother of a god, this
poor sick work-woman whose puling child lay beside her drooping
in the poisoned air of a back-shop:

_But for the nonce, on mother's breast,
My sweet boy-bishop, take thy rest._

One evening, as her husband handed her a cooling drink, she said
to him in a tone of regret:

"Why did you disturb me? I could see the Holy Virgin among flowers
and precious stones and lights. It was so beautiful! so beautiful!"

She said she was no longer in pain, that she wished her Jean to
learn Latin. And she passed away.

II

The widower, who from the Beauce country, sent his son to his
native village in the Eure-et-Loir to be brought up by kinsfolk
there. As for himself, he was a strong man, and soon learned
to be resigned; he was of a saving habit by instinct in both
business and family matters, and never put off the green serge
apron from week's end to week's end save for a Sunday visit to
the cemetery. He would hang a wreath on the arm of the black
cross, and, if it was a hot day, take a chair on the way back
along the boulevard outside the door of a wine-shop. There, as he
sat slowly emptying his glass, his eye would rest on the mothers
and their youngsters going by on the sidewalk.

These young wives, as he watched them approach and pass on, were
so many passing reminders of his Clotilde and made him feel sad
without his qu