“’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 were to come back here, my son would make his
appearance at the same moment. Oh! my son! my
son! Is he dead? Is he living? Where
is he hiding? Over there, perhaps, beyond the
great 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
one’s 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 until this moment, when I am about to die—me,
his mother, who loved him with all the intensity of
a mother’s love? Oh! isn’t it cruel,
cruel?
“’You will tell him all this, monsieur—will
you not? You will repeat to him my last words:
“’My child, my dear, dear child, be less
harsh toward 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 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, trembling, 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, monsieurs, crying like
a fool, so bitterly, indeed, that my coachman turned
round to stare at me.
“And to think that, every day, 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!”
All were crowding around M. Bermutier, the judge,
who was giving his opinion about the Saint-Cloud mystery.
For a month this in explicable crime had been the
talk of Paris. Nobody could make head or tail
of it.
M. Bermutier, standing with his back to the fireplace,
was talking, citing the evidence, discussing the various
theories, but arriving at no conclusion.
Some women had risen, in order to get nearer to him,
and were standing with their eyes fastened on the
clean-shaven face of the judge, who was saying such
weighty things. They, were shaking and trembling,
moved by fear and curiosity, and by the eager and
insatiable desire for the horrible, which haunts the
soul of every woman. One of them, paler than
the others, said during a pause:
