We finished undressing the child. He had a top in his pocket. His head rolled from one shoulder to the other; I held him and I kissed him on the brow; Versigny and Bancel took off his stockings. The grandmother suddenly started up.
"Do not hurt him!" she cried.
She took the two little white and frozen feet in her old hands, trying to warm them.
When the poor little body was naked, they began to lay it out. They took a sheet from the clothes-press.
Then the grandmother burst into bitter lamentation.
She cried out,—
"They shall give him back to me!"
She drew herself up and gazed at us, and began to pour forth incoherent utterances, in which were mingled Bonaparte, and God, and her little one, and the school to which he went, and her daughter whom she had lost, and even reproaches to us. She was livid, haggard, as though seeing a vision before her, and was more of a phantom than the dead child.
Then she again buried her face in her hands, placed her folded arms on her child, and once more began to sob.
The woman who was there came up to me, and without saying a word, wiped my mouth with a handkerchief. I had blood upon my lips.