had been in the asylum the old woman had not given a moment's
uneasiness to her keeper. Very quiet, very gentle, she passed the days
motionless in her easy-chair, looking straight before her; and as the
boy liked to be with her, and as she herself seemed to take an
interest in him, they shut their eyes to this infraction of the rules
and left him there sometimes for two or three hours at a time, busily
occupied in cutting out pictures.

But this new disappointment put the finishing stroke to Felicite's
ill-humor; she grew angry when Macquart proposed that all five should
go in a body in search of the boy.

"What an idea! Go you alone, and come back quickly. We have no time to
lose."

Her suppressed rage seemed to amuse Uncle Macquart, and perceiving how
disagreeable his proposition was to her, he insisted, with his
sneering laugh:

"But, my children, we should at the same time have an opportunity of
seeing the old mother; the mother of us all. There is no use in
talking; you know that we are all descended from her, and it would
hardly be polite not to go wish her a good-day, when my grandnephew,
who has come from such a distance, has perhaps never before had a good
look at her. I'll not disown her, may the devil take me if I do. To be
sure she is mad, but all the same, old mothers who have passed their
hundredth year are not often to be seen, and she well deserves that we
should show ourselves a little kind to her."

There was silence for a moment. A little shiver had run through every