Translated by Mary Stuart Symonds.
Copyright, 1891, by The Current Literature Publishing Company.
The child was lying stretched out in his little, white bed, and his eyes, grown large through fever, looked straight before him, always with the strange fixity of the sick who already perceive what the living do not see.
The mother at the foot of the bed, torn by suffering and wringing her hands to keep herself from crying, anxiously followed the progress of the disease on the poor, emaciated face of the little being. The father, an honest workman, kept back the tears which burned his eyelids.
The day broke clear and mild, a beautiful morning in June, and lighted up the narrow room in the street of the Abessess where little François, the child of Jacques and Madeleine Legrand, lay dying. He was seven years old and was very fair, very rosy, and so lively. Not three weeks ago he was gay as a sparrow; but a fever had seized him and they had brought him home one evening from the public school with his head heavy and his hands very hot. From that time he had been here in this bed and sometimes in his delirium when he looked at his little well-blackened shoes, which his mother had carefully placed in a corner on a board, he said:
“You can throw them away now, little François’ shoes! Little François will not put them on any more! Little François will not go to school any more—never, never!”
Then the father cried out and said: “Wilt thou be still!” And the mother, very pale, buried her blond head in his pillow so that little François could not hear her weep.
This night the child had not been delirious; but for the two days past the doctor had been uneasy over an odd sort of prostration which resembled abandon, it was as if at seven years the sick one already felt the weariness of life. He was tired, silent, sad, and tossed his little head about on the bolster. He had no longer a smile on his poor, thin lips, and with haggard eyes he sought, seeing they knew not what, something there beyond, very far off—
In Heaven! Perhaps! thought Madeleine, trembling.
When they wished him to take some medicine, some sirup, or a little soup, he refused. He refused everything.
“Dost thou wish anything, François?”