Then drowsiness stealing upon one over a pillow wet with tears ...
oblivion....

And Madame it was who ruled with iron hand the strange
new world to which the boy awakened.

The man was gone by morning, and the child never saw him again; but
inasmuch as those about him understood no English and he no French,
it was some time before he could grasp the false assurances of Madame
that his father had gone on a journey but would presently return. The
child knew positively that the man was not his father, but when he was
able to make this correction the matter had faded into insignificance:
life had become too painful to leave time or inclination for the
adjustment of such minor and incidental questions as one's parentage.

The little boy soon learned to know himself as Marcel, which wasn't his
name, and before long was unaware he had ever had another. As he grew
older he passed as Marcel Troyon; but by then he had forgotten how to
speak English.

A few days after his arrival the warm, bright bed-chamber was exchanged
for a cold dark closet opening off Madame's boudoir, a cupboard
furnished with a rickety cot and a broken chair, lacking any provision
for heat or light, and ventilated solely by a transom over the door;
and inasmuch as Madame shared the French horror of draughts and so kept
her boudoir hermetically sealed nine months of the year, the transom
didn't mend matters much. But that closet formed the boy's sole refuge,
if a precarious one, through several years; there alone was he ever
safe from kicks and cuffs and scoldings for faults beyond his
comprehension; but he was never permitted a candle, and the darkness