Musotte!
MUSOTTE
Let me go on. I remained at Saint-Malo without revealing my condition. Then I came back to Paris, and here some months afterward the little one was born—the child! When I fully understood what had happened to me, I experienced at first such fear; yes, such fear! Then I remembered that he was bone of your bone, and flesh of your flesh; that you had given him life, and that he was a pledge from you. But one is so stupid when one knows nothing. One's ideas change just as one's moods change, and I became contented all at once; contented with the thought that I would bring him up, that he would grow to be a man, that he would call me mother. [Weeps.] Now, he will never call me mother. He will never put his little arms around my neck, because I am going to leave him; because I am going away—I don't know where; but there, where everybody goes. Oh, God! My God!
JEAN
Calm yourself, my little Musotte. Would you be able to speak as you do speak if you were as ill as you think you are?
MUSOTTE
You do not see that the fever is burning within me; that I am losing my head, and don't know longer what I say.
JEAN
No, no; please calm yourself.
MUSOTTE