“Saint Sylvester’s day, too. It is fearful! Love for his art has changed your son’s nature, Madame Lampron.”
She gave him a tender look, as on entering the room he bent over the fire and shook out his half-smoked pipe against the bars, a thing he never failed to do the moment he entered his mother’s room.
“Dear child!” said she.
Then turning to me:
“You are a good friend, Monsieur Fabien. Never have we celebrated a Saint Sylvester without you since you came to Paris.”
“Yet this evening, Madame, I have failed in my traditions, I have no flowers. But Sylvestre tells me that you have just received flowers from the south, from an unfortunate creditor.”
My words produced an unusual effect upon her. She, who never stopped knitting to talk or to listen, laid her work upon her knees, and fixed her eyes upon me, filled with anxiety.
“Has he told you?”
Lampron who was poking the fire, his slippered feet stretched out toward the hearth, turned his head.
“No, mother, I merely told him that we had received a basket of flowers. Not much to confide. Yet why should he not know all? Surely he is our friend enough to know all. He should have known it long since were it not cruel to share between three a burden that two can well bear.”