dow to live in a convent; I will obey
you; I will do anything, anything that you bid me, to expiate the wrong
I have done you, if that so the children may be happy! The children! Oh,
the children!'

"'I have only one child,' said the Count, stretching out a wasted arm,
in his despair, towards his son.

"'Pardon a penitent woman, a penitent woman!...' wailed the Countess,
her arms about her husband's damp feet. She could not speak for sobbing;
vague, incoherent sounds broke from her parched throat.

"'You dare to talk of penitence after all that you said to Ernest!'
exclaimed the dying man, shaking off the Countess, who lay groveling
over his feet.--'You turn me to ice!' he added, and there was something
appalling in the indifference with which he uttered the words. 'You
have been a bad daughter; you have been a bad wife; you will be a bad
mother.'

"The wretched woman fainted away. The dying man reached his bed and lay
down again, and a few hours later sank into unconsciousness. The priests
came and administered the sacraments.

"At midnight he died; the scene that morning had exhausted his remaining
strength, and on the stroke of midnight I arrived with Daddy Gobseck.
The house was in confusion, and under cover of it we walked up into the
little salon adjoining the death-chamber. The three children were there
in tears, with two priests, who had come to watch with the dead. Ernest
came over to me, and said that his mother desired to be alone in the
Count's room.

"'Do not go in,' he said; and I admired the child for his tone and
gesture; 'she is praying there.'

"Gobseck began to laugh that soundless laugh of his, but I felt too much
touched by the feeling in Ernest's little face to join in the miser's
sardonic amusement. When Ernest saw that we moved towards the door,
he planted himself in front of it, crying out, 'Mamma, here are some
gentlemen in black who want to see you!'

"Gobseck lifted Ernest out of the way as if the child had been a
feather, and opened the door.

"What a scene it was that met our eyes! The room was in frightful
disorder; clothes and papers and rags lay tossed about in a confusion
horrible to see in the presence of Death; and there, in the midst, stood
the Countess in disheveled despair, unable to utter a word, her eyes
glittering. The Count had scarcely breathed his last before his wife
came in and forced open the drawers and the desk; the carpet was strewn
with litter, some of the