also, is still so weak in presence of his sorrow that even after these
long years he can not think of it without weeping."

Lampron actually was weeping, he who was so seldom moved. Down his brown
beard, tinged already with gray, a tear was trickling. I noticed that
Madame Lampron was stooping lower and lower over her needles. He went
on:

"I have kept the portrait, the one you saw, Fabien. They would like to
have it over yonder. They are old folk by now. Every year they ask me
for this relic of our common sorrow; every year they send me, about this
time a basket of white flowers, chiefly lilacs, the dead girl's flower,
and their meaning is, 'Give up to us what is left of her, the masterpiece
built up of your youth and hers.' But I am selfish, Fabien. I, like
them, am jealous of all the sorrows this portrait recalls to me, and I
deny them. Come, mother, where are the flowers? I have promised Fabien
to show them to him."

But his old mother could not answer. Having no doubt bewept this sorrow
too often to find fresh tears, her eyes followed her son with restless
compassion. He, beside the window, was hunting among the chairs and
lounges crowded in this corner of the little sitting-room.

He brought us a box of white wood. "See," said he, "'tis my wedding
bouquet."

And he emptied it on the table. Parma violets, lilacs, white camellias
and moss rolled out in slightly faded bunches, spreading a sweet smell in
which there breathed already a vague scent of death and corruption. A
violet fell on my knees. I picked it up.