And so, after these harrowing scenes, she would press him to her
heart in the most passionate embrace; she would cover with her kisses
the traces of the blows; and she would strive, by the most delirious
caresses, to make him forget the paternal brutalities. With him she
sobbed. Like him, she would shake her clinched fists in the vacant
space; exclaiming, "Coward, tyrant, assassin!" The little Gilberte
mingled her tears with theirs; and, pressed against each other, they
deplored their destiny, cursing the common enemy, the head of the
family.

Thus did Maxence spend his boyhood between equally fatal
exaggerations, between the revolting brutalities of his father, and
the dangerous caresses of his mother; the one depriving him of every
thing, the other refusing him nothing.

For Mme. Favoral had now found a use for her humble savings.

If the idea had never come to the cashier of the Mutual Credit
Society to put a few sous in his son's pocket, the too weak mother
would have suggested to him the want of money in order to have the
pleasure of gratifying it.

She who had suffered so many humiliations in her life, she could not
bear the idea of her son having his pride wounded, and being unable
to indulge in those little trifling expenses which are the vanity
of schoolboys.

"Here, take this," she would tell him on holidays, slipping a few
francs into his hands.