Philippe
lost all. After such a strain, the careless mind as well as the
bravest weakens. When Philippe went home that night he was not
thinking of suicide, for he had never really meant to kill himself; he
no longer thought of his lost place, nor of the sacrificed security,
nor of his mother, nor of Mariette, the cause of his ruin; he walked
along mechanically. When he got home, his mother in tears, Madame
Descoings, and Joseph, all fell on his neck and kissed him and brought
him joyfully to a seat by the fire.
"Bless me!" thought he, "the threat has worked."
The brute at once assumed an air suitable to the occasion; all the
more easily, because his ill-luck at cards had deeply depressed him.
Seeing her atrocious Benjamin so pale and woe-begone, the poor mother
knelt beside him, kissed his hands, pressed them to her heart, and
gazed at him for a long time with eyes swimming in tears.
"Philippe," she said, in a choking voice, "promise not to kill
yourself, and all shall be forgotten."
Philippe looked at his sorrowing brother and at Madame Descoings,
whose eyes were full of tears, and thought to himself, "They are good
creatures." Then he took his mother in his arms, raised her and put
her on his knee, pressed her to his heart and whispered as he kissed
her, "For the second time, you give me life."
The Descoings managed to serve an excellent dinner, and to add two
bottles of old wine with a little "liqueur des iles," a treasure left
over from her former business.
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