For a moment she became silent, afraid that she might burst into sobs.  The wound dealt her by her childlessness had always remained open.  She and her husband were now growing old in bitter solitude in three little rooms overlooking a courtyard in the Rue de Lille.  In this retirement they subsisted on the salary which she, the wife, received as a lady-delegate, joined to what they had been able to save of their original fortune.  The former fan-painter of triumphant mien was now completely blind, a mere thing, a poor suffering thing, whom his wife seated every morning in an armchair where she still found him in the evening when she returned home from her incessant peregrinations through the frightful misery of guilty mothers and martyred children.  He could no longer eat, he could no longer go to bed without her help, he had only her left him, he was her child as he would say at times with a despairing irony which made them both weep.

A child?  Ah, yes! she had ended by having one, and it was he!  An old child, born of disaster; one who appeared to be eighty though he was less than fifty years old, and who amid his black and ceaseless night ever dreamt of sunshine during the long hours which he was compelled to spend alone.  And Madame Angelin did not only envy that poor workwoman her little boy, she also envied her that old man smoking his pipe yonder, that infirm relic of labor who at all events saw clearly and still lived.

“Don’t worry the lady,” said Norine to her son; for she felt anxious, quite moved indeed, at seeing the other so disturbed, with her heart so full.  “Run away and play.”

She had learnt a little of Madame Angelin’s sad story from Mathieu.  And with the deep gratitude which she felt towards her benefactress was blended a sort of impassioned respect, which rendered her timid and deferent each time that she saw her arrive, tall and distinguished, ever clad in black, and showing the remnants of her former beauty which sorrow had wrecked already, though she was barely six-and-forty years of age.  For Norine, the lady-delegate was like some queen who had fallen from her throne amid frightful and undeserved sufferings.

“Run away, go and play, my darling,” Norine repeated to her boy:  “you are tiring madame.”

“Tiring me, oh no!” exclaimed Madame Angelin, conquering her emotion.  “On the contrary, he does me good.  Kiss me, kiss me again, my pretty fellow.”

Then she began to bestir and collect herself.

“Well, it is getting late, and I have so many places to go to between now and this evening!  This is what I can do for you.”