first he struggled and refused, crying so much that M. Vigneron was
obliged to interfere and try to make him ashamed of himself. What! he who
was never frightened of anything! who bore suffering with the courage of
a grown-up man! And to think it was a question of kissing his poor aunt,
who had always been so kind, whose last thought must most certainly have
been for him!

"Give him to me," said he to his wife; "he's going to be good."

Gustave ended by clinging to his father's neck. He came shivering in his
night-shirt, displaying his wretched little body devoured by scrofula. It
seemed indeed as though the miraculous water of the piscinas, far from
curing him, had freshened the sore on his back; whilst his scraggy leg
hung down inertly like a dry stick.

"Kiss her," resumed M. Vigneron.

The child leant forward and kissed his aunt on the forehead. It was not
death which upset him and caused him to struggle. Since he had been in
the room he had been looking at the dead woman with an air of quiet
curiosity. He did not love her, he had suffered on her account so long.
He had the ideas and feelings of a man, and the weight of them was
stifling him as, like his complaint, they developed and became more
acute. He felt full well that he was too little, that children ought not
to understand what only concerns their elders.

However, his father, seating himself out of the way, kept him on his
knee, whilst his mother closed the window and lit the two candles on the
mantelpiece. "Ah! my poor dear," murmured M. Vigneron, feeling that he
must say something, "it's a cruel loss for all of us. Our trip is now