am dying. I am dying without ever again seeing
either of them--either one or the other!

"'He--the man I loved--has written to me every day for the last twenty
years; and I--I have never consented to see him, even for one second;
for I had a strange feeling that, if he came back here, it would be at
that very moment my son would again make his appearance! Ah! my son!
my son! Is he dead? Is he living? Where is he hiding? Over there,
perhaps, at the other side of the ocean, in some country so far away
that even its very name is unknown to me! Does he ever think of me?
Ah! if he only knew! How cruel children are! Did he understand to what
frightful suffering he condemned me, into what depths of despair, into
what tortures, he cast me while I was still in the prime of life,
leaving me to suffer like this even to this moment, when I am going to
die--me, his mother, who loved him with all the violence of a mother's
love! Oh! isn't it cruel, cruel?

"'You will tell him all this, monsieur--will you not? You will repeat
for him my last words:

"'My child, my dear, dear child, be less harsh towards poor women!
Life is already brutal and savage enough in its dealings with them. My
dear son, think of what the existence of your poor mother has been
ever since the day when you left her. My dear child, forgive her, and
love her, now that she is dead, for she has had to endure the most
frightful penance ever inflicted on a woman.'

"She gasped for breath, shuddering, as if she had addressed the last
words to her son and as if he stood by her bedside.

"Then she added:

"'You will tell him also, monsieur, that I never again saw--the
other.'

"Once more she ceased speaking, then, in a broken voice she said:

"'Leave me now, I beg of you. I want to die all alone, since they are
not with me.'"

Maitre Le Brument added:

"And I left the house, messieurs, crying like a fool, so vehemently,
indeed, that my coachman turned round to stare at me.

"And to think that, every day, heaps of dramas like this are being
enacted all around us!

"I have not found the son--that son--well, say what you like about
him, but I call him that criminal son!"

THE SPASM

The hotel-guests slowly entered the dining-room, and sat down in their
places. The waiters began to attend on them in a leisurely fashion so
as to enable those who were late to arrive, and so as to avoid
bringing back the dishes; and the old bathers, the _habitues_, th