"Why, I'm forgetting my own good
mother!" And as his task was now ended, he started off on the run,
taking the shortest cut to the Faubourg Saint-Denis. "Poor
mother!" he said to himself as he tore along, "what a night she
must have had! She must have cried her eyes out!"
He spoke the truth. The poor woman had passed a night of agony--
counting the hours, and trembling each time the door of the house
opened, announcing some tenant's return. And as morning
approached, her anxiety increased. "For her son would not have
allowed her to remain in such suspense," she said to herself,
"unless he had met with some accident or encountered some of his
former friends--those detestable scamps who had tried to make him
as vile as themselves." Perhaps he had met his father, Polyte
Chupin, the man whom she still loved in spite of everything,
because he was her husband, but whom she judged, and whom indeed
she knew, to be capable of any crime. And of all misfortunes, it
was an accident, even a fatal accident, that she dreaded least.
In her heroic soul the voice of honor spoke even more loudly than
the imperious instinct of maternity; and she would rather have
found her son lying dead on the marble slabs of the Morgue than
seated in the dock at the Assize Court.
Her poor eyes were weary of weeping when she at last recognized
Victor's familiar step approaching down the passage. She hastily
opened the door, and as soon as she FELT that he was near her, for
she could not see him, she asked: "Where have you spent the night?
Where have you come from? What has happened?"
His only answer was to fling his arms round her neck, following
alike the impulse of his heart and the advice of experience, which
told him that this would be the best explanation he could give.
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