“Who speaks?” I said. “I am at madame’s service.”
The voice caught in a sob.
“Je vous rends grâce—whoever you are, I thank you from my heart. It is my little Foucaud, my dearest, that must come to his maman, and quickly.”
I answered that I would summon him, and I rose to my feet. I had no difficulty in finding the boy. He came, white-faced and wondering, and knelt down.
“Maman, maman—canst thou hear me? My throat is a little hoarse, maman.”
“Oh, my baby, my little son! Thou wilt be sweet and tender with Lolo in the happy days that are coming. And thou wilt never forget maman—say it, say it, lest her heart should break.”
God of mercy! Who was I to stand and listen to these pitiful confidences! I drew aside, watchful only of the boy lest his grief and terror should drive him mad. In a moment a white hand, laden with a dark thick coil of hair, was thrust through the opening. It was all the unhappy woman could leave her darling to remember her by. No glimpse of her face—no touch of her lips on his. From the dark into the dark she must go, and his very memory of her should be associated with the most dreadful period of his life. When they came for her in another instant, I heard the agony of her soul find vent in a single cry: “My lambs, alone amongst the wolves!”
Kind Madame Beau was there beside me.
“Lift him up,” she whispered. “He will be motherless in an hour.”
As I stooped to take the sobbing and hysterical child in my arms, I heard a voice speak low on the other side of the wall—