Then the old boy made a decisive gesture:
“I can’t, I can’t tell you.... No, I won’t tell you....”
Everybody rose. Everybody protested.
M. Simare took refuge in laughter:
“Well, no, I won’t tell you.”
“Why not? I don’t know! It’s her eyes.... There are words one can’t utter when one looks at her, there are things one can’t tell.”
He was no longer laughing. The others were silent. And he continued:
“Look at her eyes. They gaze at you so softly, so innocently.... All the time that I was talking my nonsense, I wanted to invent something for her, something about saints and angels and a good little girl who loves her mother and only thinks of pleasing her and is happy from morning till night....”