"How happy I should be to see your mother! I have so often thought of her!"
And, after another pause, in a tender voice:
"How she must adore you!"
An unexpected emotion swelled George's heart, and before him reappeared the interior vision of the house he had abandoned, forgotten, and, for a moment, all the past sorrows came back to his mind, together with all the painful pictures: his mother's emaciated face, her eyelids swollen and reddened by tears; the sweet and heart-breaking remembrance of Christine; the sickly child whose large head was always bent on a breast barren of all but sighs; the cadaveric mask of the poor idiotic gormand. And the tired eyes of his mother asked him again, as when they separated: "For whom are you abandoning me?"
Again his soul stretched out toward the distant house, suddenly inclining before it like a tree before a squall. And the secret resolution—made in the obscurity of the chamber, between Hippolyte's arms—vacillated beneath the shock of an obscure warning when he saw again, in memory, the closed door behind which was Demetrius's bed, when he saw again the mortuary chapel at the corner of the cemetery, in the bluish and solemn shadow of the protecting mountain.
But Hippolyte was speaking, becoming loquacious. As at other times, she imprudently abandoned herself to her domestic reminiscences. And he, as at other times, began to listen, observing with uneasiness certain vulgar lines that the mouth of this woman fell into, during the abundance and heat of the discourse, observing, as he had done so often before, the particular gesture that was habitual to her when she was excited, that ungraceful gesture that did not seem to belong to her. She was saying:
"You saw my mother one day in the street. Do you remember? What a difference between my mother and my father! My father was always good and affectionate to us, incapable of beating us or severely scolding us. My mother is violent, impetuous, almost cruel. Ah, if I told you of the martyrdom of my sister, poor Adriana! She always rebelled; and her rebellion exasperated my mother, who used to beat her until the blood came. I knew enough to disarm her by recognizing my fault and asking her pardon. For all that, with all her severity, she had an immense love for us. Our apartment had a window that led out on a cistern, and we, in play, often used to stand at this window and draw up the water with a little pail. One day my mother went out, and by chance we were left alone. A few minutes after, we were surprised to see her come in again, all in tears, agitated, upset. She took me in her arms and covered me with kisses, sobbing as if insane, in the street she had had a presentiment that I had fallen from that window."
George saw again, in memory, the face of that hysterical old woman in which was exaggerated all the defects of her daughter's face: the development of the lower jaw, the length of the chin, the width of the nostrils. He saw again that forehead, like that of a Fury, over which bristled the gray hair, thick and dry, and those dark eyes, deep-set beneath the superciliary ridge, that revealed the fanatic ardor of a bigot and the obstinate avarice of an insignificant bourgeoise.
"You see that scar beneath my chin?" went on Hippolyte. "My mother did that. My sister and I went to school, and we had very nice dresses that we had to take off on our return. One evening, on going home, I found on the table a foot-warmer, that I took to rewarm my frozen hands. My mother said to me: 'Go and undress!' I replied: 'I'm going,' and I continued to warm myself. She repeated: 'Go and undress!' I repeated: 'I'm going.' She had in her hand a large brush, and was brushing a dress. I lingered in the middle of the room with the foot-warmer. My mother repeated for the third time: 'Go and undress!' And I repeated: 'I'm going.' Furious, she threw the brush at me. It struck and broke the foot-warmer. A splinter of the handle struck me here, beneath the chin, and cut a vein. The blood flowed. My aunt ran to me quickly, but my mother neither moved nor looked at me. The blood flowed. By good fortune they soon found a surgeon who ligated the vein. My mother remained obstinately silent. When my father came home and saw me bandaged he asked what was the matter. My mother, without a word, looked at me fixedly. I replied: 'I fell down the staircase.' My mother said nothing. As a consequence, I have suffered considerably from that loss of blood. But how Adriana was beaten!—particularly on account of Giulio, my brother-in-law. I shall never forget a terrible scene."
She stopped. Perhaps she had just noticed on George's face some equivocal sign.