"Morel! Morel, give Adèle to me!" cried the unhappy mother, extending her arms towards him; "she is not dead,—it is not possible! Let me have her, and I shall be able to warm her in my arms."
The curiosity of the idiot was excited by observing the pertinacity with which the bailiffs kept close to the lapidary, who would not part with the body of his child. She ceased her yells and cries, and, rising from her mattress, approached gently, protruded her hideous, senseless countenance over Morel's shoulder, staring in vacant wonder at the pale corpse of her grandchild, the features of the idiot retaining their usual expression of stupid sullenness. At the end of a few minutes, she uttered a sort of horrible yawning noise, almost resembling the roar of a famished animal; then, hurrying back to her mattress, she threw herself upon it, exclaiming:
"Hungry! hungry! hungry!"
"Well, gentlemen," said the poor, half-crazed artisan, with haggard looks, "you see all that is left me of my poor child, my Adèle,—we called her Adèle, she was so pretty she deserved a pretty name; and she was just four years old last night. Ay, and this morning even I kissed her, and she put her little arms about my neck and embraced me,—oh, so fondly! And now, you see, gentlemen, perhaps you will tell me there is one mouth less to feed, and that I am lucky to get rid of one,—you think so, don't you?"
The unfortunate man's reason was fast giving way under the many shocks he had received.
"Morel," cried Madeleine, "give me my child! I will have her!"
"To be sure," replied the lapidary; "that is only fair. Everybody ought to secure their own happiness!" So saying, he laid the child in its mother's arms, and uttering a groan, such as comes only from a breaking heart, he covered his face with his hands; while Madeleine, almost as frenzied as her husband, placed the body of her child amid the straw of her wretched bed, watching it with frantic jealousy, while the other children, kneeling around her, filled the air with their wailings.
The bailiffs, who had experienced a temporary feeling of compassion at the death of the child, soon fell back into their accustomed brutality.
"I say, friend," said Malicorne to the lapidary, "your child is dead, and there's an end of it! I dare say you think it a misfortune; but then, you see, we are all mortal, and neither we nor you can bring it back to life. So come along with us; for, to tell you the truth, we're upon the scent of a spicy one we must nab to-day. So don't delay us, that's a trump!"
But Morel heard not a word he said. Entirely preoccupied with his own sad thoughts, the bewildered man kept up a kind of wandering delivery of his own afflicting ideas.