e name he did not know, had settled a
handsome sum of money on him.

How often during the last forty years had she wished to go and see him,
and to embrace him. She could not imagine to herself that he had grown!
She always thought of that small, human _larva_, which she had held in
her arms and pressed to her side for a day.

How often she had said to her lover: "I cannot bear it any longer; I
must go and see him."

But he had always stopped her, and kept her from going. She would not be
able to restrain and to master herself; their son would guess it and
take advantage of her, blackmail her; she would be lost.

* * * * *

"What is he like?" she said.

"I do not know; I have not seen him again, either."

"Is it possible? To have a son, and not to know him; to be afraid of him
and to repulse him as if he were a disgrace! It is horrible."

They went along the dusty road, overcome by the scorching sun, and
continually ascending that interminable hill.

"One might take it for a punishment," she continued; "I have never had
another child, and I could no longer resist the longing to see him,
which has possessed me for forty years. You men cannot understand that.
You must remember that I shall not live much longer, and suppose I had
never seen him again! never have seen him!... Is it possible? How could
I wait so long? I have thought about him every day since, and what a
terrible existence mine has been! I have never awakened, never, do you
understand, without my first thoughts being of him, of my child. How is
he? Oh! How guilty I feel towards him! Ought one to fear what the world
may say, in a case like this? I ought to have left everything to go
after him, to bring him up and to show love for him. I should certainly
have been much happier, but I did not dare, I was a coward. How I have
suffered! Oh! How those poor, abandoned children must hate their
mothers!"

She stopped suddenly, for she was choked by her sobs. The whole valley
was deserted and silent in the dazzling light, and the overwhelming
heat, and only the grasshoppers uttered their shrill, continuous chirp
among the sparse, yellow grass on both sides of the road.

"Sit down a little," he said.

She allowed herself to be led to the side of the ditch, and sank down
with her face in her hands. Her white hair, which hung in curls on both
sides of her face, had become all of a lump, and she wept, overcome by
profound grief