"What more did he tell you?" murmured she; "with what other tales did he amuse my child?" She looked at him with such a sad, painful smile, that he trembled and glanced timidly down; he now saw what torture he was preparing for her.
"Father was drunk," said he; "when he heard that you had gone out, he was furious; he cursed you so dreadfully that Anna and I both cried, and I begged him not insult you so, for it hurt me, for then I still loved you."
"Then he still loved me!" said his mother, wringing her hands.
"But he laughed at me, and said you did not deserve our love; that you were the cause of all our misery and want; he had become poor and wretched because he had married you, and taken to drink so as not to hear or see men pointing and laughing at you when you passed. But, mother, you look so pale, you tremble so! I will say no more; I will forget all father said; I will love you, mother; but do not look at me so dreadfully, and do not tremble in that way."
The boy wept from grief and terror. His old love had awakened; he approached his mother to kiss her, but now she pushed him back.
"I do not tremble," said she, though her teeth were chattering. "I do not tremble, and you must not forget what your father said; you must tell me all again. Speak on, speak! I must hear all, know all. What more did he say?"
The boy looked at her sadly. His voice, which before had been insolent and rude, was now quiet and gentle, and his eyes were full of tears.
"He said he married you out of pity, and because you brought him a few thousand dollars. But this gold brought no blessing with it, but a curse; and that since then it had gone worse with him than with the executioner, whom all despise, and who dares not enter an honest man's house. But that you were more despised and disgraced than the miserable man who had stripped you in the open market and whipped you through the streets; that the boys had pelted you with mud, and that the streets became red with the blood that flowed down your back."
The poor woman gave a piercing shriek, and fell as if struck by lightning to the floor. The boy threw himself weeping by her side; and the little girl, who had been sleeping in another corner of the room, awakened by the scream, came running toward them crying for bread.
But the mother moved not; she lay there pale, with closed eyes; she was cold and lifeless; she did not hear her poor little girl cry; she did not feel the hot kisses and tears of her son, who was imploring her in anxious, tender, loving words, to open her eyes, to tell him that she was not angry, that she had forgiven him. But he suddenly stopped and listened eagerly; he thought he heard the well-known sound of the bell.