At that period her heart expanded, as it were, and a mother sprang from the loving woman.  That motherly feeling for her big artist child was made up of all the vague infinite pity which filled her with tenderness, of the illogical fits of weakness into which she saw him fall each hour, of the constant pardons which she was obliged to grant him.  He was beginning to make her unhappy, his caresses were few and far between, a look of weariness constantly overspread his features.  How could she love him then if not with that other affection of every moment, remaining in adoration before him, and unceasingly sacrificing herself?  In her inmost being insatiable passion still lingered; she was still the sensuous woman with thick lips set in obstinately prominent jaws.  Yet there was a gentle melancholy, in being merely a mother to him, in trying to make him happy amid that life of theirs which now was spoilt.

Little Jacques was the only one to suffer from that transfer of tenderness.  She neglected him more; the man, his father, became her child, and the poor little fellow remained as mere testimony of their great passion of yore.  As she saw him grow up, and no longer require so much care, she began to sacrifice him, without intentional harshness, but merely because she felt like that.  At meal-times she only gave him the inferior bits; the cosiest nook near the stove was not for his little chair; if ever the fear of an accident made her tremble now and then, her first cry, her first protecting movement was not for her helpless child.  She ever relegated him to the background, suppressed him, as it were:  ’Jacques, be quiet; you tire your father.  Jacques, keep still; don’t you see that your father is at work?’

The urchin suffered from being cooped up in Paris.  He, who had had the whole country-side to roll about in, felt stifled in the narrow space where he now had to keep quiet.  His rosy cheeks became pale, he grew up puny, serious, like a little man, with eyes which stared at things in wonder.  He was five by now, and his head by a singular phenomenon had become disproportionately large, in such wise as to make his father say, ‘He has a great man’s nut!’ But the child’s intelligence seemed, on the contrary, to decrease in proportion as his skull became larger.  Very gentle and timid, he became absorbed in thought for hours, incapable of answering a question.  And when he emerged from that state of immobility he had mad fits of shouting and jumping, like a young animal giving rein to instinct.  At such times warnings ’to keep quiet’ rained upon him, for his mother failed to understand his sudden outbursts, and became uneasy at seeing the father grow irritated as he sat before his easel.  Getting cross herself, she would then hastily seat the little fellow in his corner again.  Quieted all at once, giving the startled shudder of one who has been too abruptly awakened, the child would after a time doze off with his eyes wide open, so careless of enjoying life that his toys, corks, pictures, and empty colour-tubes dropped listlessly from his hands.  Christine had already tried to teach him his alphabet, but he had cried and struggled, so they had decided to wait another year or two before sending him to school, where his masters would know how to make him learn.