“I do not know, but take off your hat, my child. It may be your father!”
It was not unlikely. I don’t think this ever happened, however, for in France, every one removes his hat while a funeral passes. They are polite to the dead as to the living. Besides this, the boy had no hat to remove.
THE MOTHER OF THE GAMIN.
He knows his mother, however, very well; he remembers a pale, worn woman, who always gave him the largest half of the scant bread, and assuaged her hunger by seeing him eat, and who managed somehow to keep the rags that hung about him clean, and had hidden somewhere, a neat and tidy suit of clothes which were worn only on fête days, and when they went to church. No matter about the father, since every boy knows who his mother is, and he knows likewise that whatever may happen to her, he is sure of all she can possibly do for him, even to the last, the supreme sacrifice.
They lived together in a garret, somewhere, or a cellar. With these people it is always one extreme or another,—they never have the middle of anything.
