Next morning, when Christophe went down, he found the child with her arms round Madame Germain's neck, with the naïve confidence which makes children surrender absolutely to those who have won their affection. She was glad to go with her new friend…. Alas! she had soon forgotten her adopted father. She showed just the same affection for her new mother. That was not very comforting. Did Madame Germain, in the egoism of her love, see it?… Perhaps. But what did it matter? The thing is to love. That way lies happiness….
A few weeks after the funeral Madame Germain took the child into the country, far away from Paris. Christophe and Olivier saw them off. The woman had an expression of contentment and secret joy which they had never known in her before. She paid no attention to them. However, just as they were going, she noticed Christophe, and held out her hand, and said:
"It was you who saved me."
"What's the matter with the woman?" asked Christophe in amazement, as they were going upstairs after her departure.
A few days later the post brought him a photograph of a little girl whom he did not know, sitting on a stool, with her little hands sagely folded in her lap, while she looked up at him with clear, sad eyes. Beneath it were written these words:
"With thanks from my dear, dead child."
* * * * *
Thus it was that the breath of life passed into all these people. In the attic on the fifth floor was a great and mighty flame of humanity, the warmth and light of which were slowly filtered through the house.
But Christophe saw it not. To him the process was very slow.
"Ah!" he would sigh, "if one could only bring these good people together, all these people of all classes and every kind of belief, who refuse to know each other! Can't it be done?"