Then I would tell him all kinds of stories, which he would listen to very seriously. They all interested him, but there was one especially which filled his little soul with delight. It was “The Blue Bird.” Whenever I finished that, he would say to me, “Tell it again! tell it again!” And I would tell it again until his little pale blue-veined head sank back upon the pillow in slumber.
The doctor used to answer all our questions by saying,
“There is nothing extraordinary the matter with him!”
No! There was nothing extraordinary the matter with little Sylvestre. One evening last year his father called me.
“Come,” he said, “the little one is still worse.”
I approached the cradle over which the mother hung motionless, as if tied down above it by all the powers of her soul.
Little Sylvestre turned his eyes towards me; their pupils had already rolled up beneath his eyelids, and could not descend again.
“Godfather,” he said, “you are not to tell me any more stories.”
No, I was not to tell him any more stories!
Poor Jeanne!—poor mother!