“The son of a widow! Ah, monsieur le curé, why did he use that unhappy phrase? The evil thought came to me at once, and it never quitted me all the morning that I worked at the wretch’s side. I imagined all that she was about to suffer—poor Catherine!—when she no longer had her son to care for and protect her, and she must be alone with the miserable drunkard, now completely brutalized, ugly, and capable of anything. A neighboring clock struck eleven, and the workmen all descended to lunch. We remained until the last, Philip and I, but in stepping on the ladder to descend, he turned to me with a leer, and said, in his hoarse, dissipated voice:
“‘You see, steady as a sailor; Camille is not nearly the son of a widow.’
“The blood mounted to my head. I was beside myself. I seized with both hands the rounds of the ladder to which Philip clung shouting ‘Help!’ and with a single effort I toppled it over.
“He was instantly killed—by an accident, they said—and now Camille is the son of a widow and need not go.
“That is what I have done, monsieur le curé, and what I want to tell to you and to the good God. I repent, I ask pardon, of course; but I must not see Catherine in her black dress, happy on the arm of her son, or I could not regret my crime. To prevent that I will emigrate—I will lose myself in America. As to my penance—see, monsieur le curé, here is the little cross of gold that Catherine refused when she told me that she was in love with Philip. I have always kept it, in memory of the only happy days that I ever knew in my life. Take it and sell it. Give the money to the poor.”
Jack rose absolved by the Abbé Faber.
One thing is certain, and that is that the priest never sold the little cross of gold. After having paid its price into the Treasury of the Church, he hung the jewel, as an ex-voto, on the altar of the chapel of the Virgin, where he often went to pray for the poor mason.
