“’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!”

THE HAND

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: