away."

"He's gone to buy the lunch, and told you to come here to fetch me?"

Claude looked at his brother, hesitated, no longer recollecting. Then
he resumed all in a breath: "Papa's gone away. He jumped off the bed,
he put all the things in the trunk, he carried the trunk down to a cab.
He's gone away."

Gervaise, who was squatting down, slowly rose to her feet, her face
ghastly pale. She put her hands to her cheeks and temples, as though she
felt her head was breaking; and she could find only these words, which
she repeated twenty times in the same tone of voice:

"Ah! good heavens!--ah! good heavens!--ah! good heavens!"

Madame Boche, however, also questioned the child, quite delighted at the
chance of hearing the whole story.

"Come, little one, you must tell us just what happened. It was he who
locked the door and who told you to bring the key, wasn't it?" And,
lowering her voice, she whispered in Claude's ear: "Was there a lady in
the cab?"

The child again got confused. Then he recommenced his story in a
triumphant manner: "He jumped off the bed, he put all the things in the
trunk. He's gone away."

Then, when Madame Boche let him go, he drew his brother in front of the
tap, and they amused themselves by turning on the water. Gervaise was
unable to cry. She was choking, leaning back against her tub, her face
still buried in her hands. Brief shudders rocked her body and she wailed
out long sighs while pressing her hands tighter against her eyes, as
though abandoning herself to the blackness of desolation, a dark, deep
pit into which she seemed to be falling.

"Come, my dear, pull yourself together!" murmured Madame Boche.

"If you only knew! If you only knew!" said she at length very faintly.
"He sent me this morning to pawn my shawl and my chemises to pay for
that cab."

And she burst out crying. The memory of the events of that morning
and of her trip to the pawn-place tore from her the sobs that had been
choking her throat. That abominable trip to the pawn-place was the thing
that hurt most in all her sorrow and despair. Tears were streaming down
her face but she didn't think of using her handkerchief.

"Be reasonable, do be quiet, everyone's looking at you," Madame Boche,
who hovered round her, kept repeating. "How can you worry yourself so
much on account of a man? You loved him, then, all the same, did you,
my poor darling? A little while ago you were saying all sorts of things
against him;