and the zigzags he made with his pencil on the door;
you see the corner scribbled over with lines and dates, in which he
was measured every month, you see him playing, running, rushing up in a
perspiration to throw himself into your arms, and, at the same time,
you also see him fixing his glazing eyes on you, or motionless and cold
under a white sheet, wet with holy water.

Does not this recollection recur to you sometimes, Grandma, and do not
you still shed a big tear as you say to yourself: "He would have been
forty now?" Do we not know, dear old lady, whose heart still bleeds,
that at the bottom of your wardrobe, behind your jewels, beside packets
of yellow letters, the handwriting of which we will not guess at, there
is a little museum of sacred relics--the last shoes in which he played
about on the gravel the day he complained of being cold, the remains
of some broken toys, a dried sprig of box, a little cap, his last, in
a triple wrapper, and a thousand trifles that are a world to you, poor
woman, that are the fragments of your broken heart?

The ties that unite children to parents are unloosed. Those which unite
parents to children are broken. In one case, it is the past that is
wiped out; in the other, the future that is rent away.

CHAPTER XXXIII. CONVALESCENCE

But, my patient reader, forget what have just said. Baby does not want
to leave you, he does not want to die, poor little thing, and if you
want a proof of it, watch him very closely; there, he smiles.

A very faint smile like those rays of sunlight that steal between two
clouds at the close of a wet winter. You rather guess at than see
this smile, but it is enough to warm your heart. The cloud begins to
disperse, he sees you, he hears you, he knows that papa is there,
your child is restored to you. His glance is already clearer. Call him
softly. He wants to turn, but he can not yet, and for his sole answer
his little hand, which is beginning to come to life again, moves and
crumples the sheet. Just wait a little, poor impatient father, and
tomorrow, on his awakening, he will say "Papa." You will see what good
it will do you, this "Papa," faint as a mere breath, this first scarcely
intelligible sign of a return to life. It will seem to you that your
child has been born again a second time.

He will still suffer, he will have further crises, the storm does not
become a calm all at once, but he will be able now to rest his head on
your should