The Gerards liked to talk.  Madame Gerard, who was a good housekeeper, discussed questions of domestic economy; telling, for example, how she had been out that day, and had seen, upon the Rue du Bac, some merino:  “A very good bargain, I assure you, Madame, and very wide!” Or perhaps the engraver, who was a simple politician, after the fashion of 1848, would declare that we must accept the Republic, “Oh, not the red-hot, you know, but the true, the real one!” Or he would wish that Cavaignac had been elected President at the September balloting; although he himself was then engraving—­one must live, after all—­a portrait of Prince Louis Napoleon, destined for the electoral platform.  M. and Madame Violette let them talk; perhaps even they did not always pay attention to the conversation.  When it was dark they held each other’s hands and gazed at the stars.

These lovely, cool, autumnal evenings, upon the balcony, under the starry heavens, are the most distant of all Amedee’s memories.  Then there was a break in his memory, like a book with several leaves torn out, after which he recalls many sad days.

Winter had come, and they no longer spent their evenings upon the balcony.  One could see nothing now through the windows but a dull, gray sky.  Amedee’s mother was ill and always remained in her bed.  When he was installed near the bed, before a little table, cutting out with scissors the hussars from a sheet of Epinal, his poor mamma almost frightened him, as she leaned her elbow upon the pillow and gazed at him so long and so sadly, while her thin white hands restlessly pushed back her beautiful, disordered hair, and two red hectic spots burned under her cheekbones.

It was not she who now came to take him from his bed in the morning, but an old woman in a short jacket, who did not kiss him, and who smelled horribly of snuff.

His father, too, did not pay much attention to him now.  When he returned in the evening from the office he always brought bottles and little packages from the apothecary.  Sometimes he was accompanied by the physician, a large man, very much dressed and perfumed, who panted for breath after climbing the five flights of stairs.  Once Amedee saw this stranger put his arms around his mother as she sat in her bed, and lay his head for a long time against her back.  The child asked, “What for, mamma?”

M. Violette, more nervous than ever, and continually throwing back the rebellious lock behind his ear, would accompany the doctor to the door and stop there to talk with him.  Then Amedee’s mother would call to him, and he would climb upon the bed, where she would gaze at him with her bright eyes and press him to her breast, saying, in a sad tone, as if she pitied him:  “My poor little Medee!  My poor little Medee!” Why was it?  What did it all mean?

His father would return with a forced smile which was pitiful to see.

“Well, what did the doctor say?”