andmother who sang so constantly was dying.

We were all standing about her bed at nightfall one spring evening. She
had been ailing scarcely more than forty-eight hours; but the doctor
said that on account of her great age she could not rally, and he
pronounced her end to be very near.

Her mind had become clear; she no longer mistook our names, and in a
sweet calm voice she begged us to remain near her--it was doubtless the
voice of other days, the one that I had never heard before.

As I stood close to my father's side I turned my eyes from my dying
grandmother, and they wandered about the room with its old-fashioned
furniture. I looked especially at the pictures of bouquets in vases
that hung upon the wall. Oh! those poor little water colors in my
grandmother's room, how ingenuous they were! They all bore this
inscription: "A Bouquet for my mother," and under this there was a
little verse of four lines dedicated to her which I could now read and
understand. These works of art had been painted by my father in his
early boyhood, and he had presented them to his mother upon each joyful
anniversary. The poor, unpretentious little pictures bore testimony
to the humble life of those early days, and they spoke of the sacred
intimacy of mother and son,--they had been painted during the time which
followed those great ordeals, the wars, the English invasion and the
burning over of the country by the enemy. For the first time I realized
that my grandmother too had been young; that, without doubt, before the
trouble with her head, my father had loved her as I loved my mamma, and
I felt that he would sorrow greatly when he lost her; I felt sorry for
him and I was also full of remorse because I had laughed at her singing,
and had been amused when she spoke to her image reflected in the
looking-glass.

They sent me down stairs. On different pretexts, the reason for which
I did not understand, they kept me away from the room until the day was
over; then they took me to the house of our friends, the D----s, where I
was to have dinner with Lucette.

When, at about half past eight, I returned home with my nurse, I
insisted upon going straight to my grandmother's room.

When I entered I was struck with the order and the air of profound peace
that pervaded the room. My father was sitting motionless at the head of
the bed--he was in the shadow, the open curtains were draped with great
precision, and on the pillow, just in its midd