Etchepare [pressing his mother's head against his breast] Poor old mother—how the misery of these three months has changed you!
The Mother. My poor boy, how you must have suffered!
Etchepare. That woman!
The Mother. Yes, they've just been telling me.
Etchepare. For ten years I've lived with that thief—that wretched woman! How she lied! Ah! When I heard that judge say to her, "You were convicted of theft and complicity with your lover," and when, before all those people, she owned to it—I tell you, mummy, I thought the skies were falling on my head—and when she admitted she'd been that man's mistress—I don't know just what happened—nor which I would have killed soonest—the judge who said such things so calmly or her who admitted them with her back turned to me. And then I was on the point of confessing myself guilty—I, an innocent man—in order not to learn any more—to get away—but I thought of you and the children! [A long pause] Come! We've got to make up our minds what we're going to do. You left them at home?
The Mother. No. I had to send them to our cousin at Bayonne. We've no longer got a home—we've nothing—we are ruined. Besides, I've got a horror of this place now. The women edge away and make signs to one another when I meet them, and in the church they leave me all alone in the middle of an empty space. Already—I had to take the children away from school.
Etchepare. My God!
The Mother. No one would speak to them. One day Georges picked a quarrel with the biggest, and they fought, and as Georges got the better of it, the other, to revenge himself, called him the son of a gallows-bird.
Etchepare. And Georges?
The Mother. He came home crying and wouldn't go out of doors. It was then that I sent them away to Bayonne.