Sometimes, even now, this moribund, pale old woman, who seemed to have no blood left in her, was seized with nervous fits like electric shocks, which galvanised her, and for an hour brought her atrocious intensity of life.  She would lie on her bed rigid, with her eyes open; then hiccoughs would come upon her and she would writhe and struggle, acquiring the frightful strength of those hysterical madwomen whom one has to tie down in order to prevent them from breaking their heads against a wall.  This return to former vigour, these sudden attacks, gave her a terrible shock.  When she came to again, she would stagger about with such a scared, stupefied look, that the gossips of the Faubourg used to say:  “She’s been drinking, the crazy old thing!”

Little Silvere’s childish smile was for her the last pale ray which brought some warmth to her frozen limbs.  Weary of solitude, and frightened at the thought of dying alone in one of her fits, she had asked to have the child.  With the little fellow running about near her, she felt secure against death.  Without relinquishing her habits of taciturnity, or seeking to render her automatic movements more supple, she conceived inexpressible affection for him.  Stiff and speechless, she would watch him playing for hours together, listening with delight to the intolerable noise with which he filled the old hovel.  That tomb had resounded with uproar ever since Silvere had been running about it, bestriding broomsticks, knocking up against the doors, and shouting and crying.  He brought Adelaide back to the world, as it were; she looked after him with the most adorable awkwardness; she who, in her youth, had neglected the duties of a mother, now felt the divine pleasures of maternity in washing his face, dressing him, and watching over his sickly life.  It was a reawakening of love, a last soothing passion which heaven had granted to this woman who had been so ravaged by the want of some one to love; the touching agony of a heart that had lived amidst the most acute desires, and which was now dying full of love for a child.

She was already too far gone to pour forth the babble of good plump grandmothers; she adored the child in secret with the bashfulness of a young girl, without knowing how to fondle him.  Sometimes she took him on her knees, and gazed at him for a long time with her pale eyes.  When the little one, frightened by her mute white visage, began to cry, she seemed perplexed by what she had done, and quickly put him down upon the floor without even kissing him.  Perhaps she recognised in him a faint resemblance to Macquart the poacher.