"Oh, my son, my son!" she cried.
"You know about this?" he asked abruptly, after a little, indicating his left arm.
Mme. de la Vireville nodded, unable, for all her courage, to trust herself to speak for a moment.
"I shall have a hook," went on Fortuné, with a faint smile. "Like old Yves, the ferryman at Coatquen, when I was a boy. . . . Do you remember? He always said that he could do more with it than with a hand. . . . I used to envy him that hook. And I should never have had an elbow again, you know."
Mme. de la Vireville swallowed something in her throat. "Since Monseigneur told me," she said, sufficiently firmly, "I have not ceased to thank God that it is your left arm."
"I also," replied her son, with an effort. "And for Monseigneur's charity, and now, for your coming, my heart. . . . Sit close to the bed, and I shall sleep again."
(3)
Several times during the next two or three weeks did the Grand Vicar congratulate the Bishop on having sent for Mme. de la Vireville. There was no room for her in the little house, but she lodged near, and spent all her days at her son's bedside. That son no longer looked quite so much like the wreck of his former hardy self, and, but for the fact that his memory still played him obstinate tricks over names, he had regained his normal mental condition. But he seemed to his mother to have something on his mind. One day, half in jest, she taxed him with it.
He looked at her from his pillows with a smile.