The clown, standing near the little bed, threw upon the child an earnest look, very grave, but of an inexpressible sweetness.
He shook his head, looked at the anxious father, the grief-stricken mother, and said, smiling, “He is right, this is not Boum-Boum!” and then he went out.
“I can not see him, I will never see Boum-Boum any more!” repeated the child, whose little voice spoke to the angels. “Boum-Boum is perhaps there, there, where little François will soon go.”
And suddenly—it was only a half-hour since the clown had disappeared—the door opened quickly, and in his black, spangled clothes, his yellow cap on his head, the gilded butterfly on his breast and on his back, with a smile as big as the mouth of a money-box and a powdered face, Boum-Boum, the true Boum-Boum, the Boum-Boum of the circus, the Boum-Boum of the popular neighborhood, the Boum-Boum of little François—Boum-Boum appeared.
Lying on his little white bed the child clapped his thin, little hands, laughing, crying, happy, saved, with a joy of life in his eyes, and cried “Bravo!” with his seven-year gaiety, which all at once kindled up like a match:
“Boum-Boum! It is he, it is he, this time! Here is Boum-Boum! Long live Boum-Boum! Good-day, Boum-Boum.”
And when the doctor came back, he found, seated by little François’s bedside, a clown with a pale face, who made the little one laugh again and again, and who said to the child while he was stirring a piece of sugar into a cup of medicine:
“Thou knowest, if thou dost not drink, little François, Boum-Boum will not come back any more.”
So the child drank.
“Is it not good?”