Does not this recollection recur to you sometimes, Grandma, and do not you still shed a big tear as you say to yourself:  “He would have been forty now?” Do we not know, dear old lady, whose heart still bleeds, that at the bottom of your wardrobe, behind your jewels, beside packets of yellow letters, the handwriting of which we will not guess at, there is a little museum of sacred relics—­the last shoes in which he played about on the gravel the day he complained of being cold, the remains of some broken toys, a dried sprig of box, a little cap, his last, in a triple wrapper, and a thousand trifles that are a world to you, poor woman, that are the fragments of your broken heart?

The ties that unite children to parents are unloosed.  Those which unite parents to children are broken.  In one case, it is the past that is wiped out; in the other, the future that is rent away.

CHAPTER XXXIII

CONVALESCENCE

But, my patient reader, forget what have just said.  Baby does not want to leave you, he does not want to die, poor little thing, and if you want a proof of it, watch him very closely; there, he smiles.

A very faint smile like those rays of sunlight that steal between two clouds at the close of a wet winter.  You rather guess at than see this smile, but it is enough to warm your heart.  The cloud begins to disperse, he sees you, he hears you, he knows that papa is there, your child is restored to you.  His glance is already clearer.  Call him softly.  He wants to turn, but he can not yet, and for his sole answer his little hand, which is beginning to come to life again, moves and crumples the sheet.  Just wait a little, poor impatient father, and tomorrow, on his awakening, he will say “Papa.”  You will see what good it will do you, this “Papa,” faint as a mere breath, this first scarcely intelligible sign of a return to life.  It will seem to you that your child has been born again a second time.

He will still suffer, he will have further crises, the storm does not become a calm all at once, but he will be able now to rest his head on your shoulder, nestle in your arms among the blankets; he will be able to complain, to ask help and relief of you with eye and voice; you will, in short, be reunited, and you will be conscious that he suffers less by suffering on your knees.  You will hold his hand in yours, and if you seek to go away he will look at you and grasp your finger.  How many things are expressed in this grasp.  Dear sir, have you experienced it?

“Papa, do stay with me, you help to make me better; when I am alone I am afraid of the pain.  Hold me tightly to you, and I shall not suffer so much.”