"You are mistaken, father; I am only a poor creature, very simple and very unhappy; I have only one feeling in my heart, but it fills me entirely: love of my son. Oh, could I see him, were it only for a moment, I fancy I should die happy. At long intervals, a banker writes me to come to him, and he pays me money, sometimes small sums, at others large. When I ask him whence the money comes, he says that he does not know himself, and that a strange correspondent has requested him to pay it to me. Well, father, every time I receive money in this way, I fancy that it comes from my son, that he is thinking of me, and I am happy."
"Do not doubt that it is your son who sends you this money."
"Is it not?" she said, with a start of joy. "Well, I feel so persuaded of that, that I keep it; all the sums are at my house, intact, in the order as I received them. Often, when grief crushes me more than usual, when the weight that oppresses my heart seems to me too crushing, I look at them, I let them slip through my fingers, as I talk to them, and I fancy my son answers me; he bids me hope I shall see him again, and I feel hope return. Oh! You must think me very foolish to tell you all this, father: but of what can a mother speak, save of her son? Of what can she think but her son?"
Father Seraphin gazed on her with a tenderness mingled with respect. Such grandeur and simplicity in a woman of so ordinary a rank overcame him, and he felt tears running down his cheeks which he did not attempt to check.
"Oh, holy and noble creature!" he said to her; "Hope, hope; God watches over you."
"You believe so too, father? Oh, thanks for that. You have told me nothing, and yet I feel comforted through having seen you and let my heart overflow in your presence. It is because you are good, you have understood my sorrow, for you, too, have doubtless suffered."
"Alas; madam, each of us has a cross to bear in this world; happy is he whom his burden does not crush."
"Pardon my having troubled you with my sorrows," she said, as she prepared to leave; "I thank you for your kind words."
"I have nothing to pardon you; but permit me to ask you one more question."
"Do so, father."