ow step was heavy and dragged, so I knew at once that it
was not Mother Barberin. I felt a warm breath on my cheek.

"Are you asleep?" This was said in a harsh whisper.

I took care not to answer, for the terrible words, "I'll be angry" still
rang in my ears.

"He's asleep," said Mother Barberin; "the moment he gets into bed he
drops off. You can talk without being afraid that he'll hear."

I ought, of course, to have told him that I was not asleep, but I did
not dare. I had been ordered to go to sleep, I was not yet asleep, so I
was in the wrong.

"Well, what about your lawsuit?" asked Mother Barberin.

"Lost it. The judge said that I was to blame for being under the
scaffold." Thereupon he banged his fist on the table and began to swear,
without saying anything that meant anything.

"Case lost," he went on after a moment; "money lost, all gone, poverty
staring us in the face. And as though that isn't enough, when I get back
here, I find a child. Why didn't you do what I told you to do?"

"Because I couldn't."

"You could not take him to a Foundlings' Home?"

"A woman can't give up a little mite like that if she's fed it with her
own milk and grown to love it."

"It's not your child."

"Well, I wanted to do what you told me, but just at that very moment he
fell ill."

"Ill?"

"Yes. Then I couldn't take him to that place. He might have died."

"But when he got better?"

"Well, he didn't get better all at once. After that sickness another
came. He coughed so it would have made your heart bleed to hear him,
poor little mite. Our little Nicolas died like that. It seemed to me
that if I sent him to the Foundlings' Home he'd died also."

"But after?... after?"

"Well, time went on and I thought that as I'd put off going I'd put it
off a bit longer."

"How old is he now?"

"Eight."

"Well then, he'll go now to the place where he should have gone sooner,
and he won't like it so well now."

"Oh, Jerome, you can't ... you won't do that!"

"Won't I? and who's going to stop me? Do you think we can keep him
always?"

There was a moment's silence. I was hardly able to breathe. The lump in
my throat nearly choked me. After a time Mother Barberin went on:

"How Paris has changed you! You wouldn't have spoken like that to me
before you went away."

"Perhaps not. But if Paris has changed me, it's also pretty near killed
me. I can't work now. We've got no money. The cow's sold. When we
haven't enough t