Instinctively she threw up her arm to guard the child she heldclasped to her bosom, and struck her breast, thus exposed, asevere blow against the corner of the iron press. She felt novery acute pain at the time, but later on an abscess formed,which got well, but presently reopened, and a low fever supervenedthat confined her to her bed.
There, in the long, long evenings, she would fold her littleone in her one sound arm and croon over him in a hot, feverishwhisper bits of her favourite ditty:
The fisherman, when dawn is nigh, Peers forth to greet the kindling sky....
Above all, she loved the refrain that recurred at the end ofeach verse with only the change of a word. It was her littleJean's lullaby, who became, at the caprice of the words, turnand turn about, General, Lawyer, and ministrant at the altarin her fond hopes.
A woman of the people, knowing nothing of the circumstances offashionable life, save from a few peeps at their outward pompand the vague tales of _concierges_, footmen, and cooks, shepictured her boy at twenty more beautiful than an archangel,his breast glittering with decorations, in a drawing-room fullof flowers, amid a bevy of fashionable ladies with manners everywhit as genteel as had the actresses at the _Gymnase_:
_But for the nonce, on mother's breast, Sweet wee gallant, take thy rest._Presently the vision changed; now her boy was standing up gownedin Court, by his eloquence saving the life and honour of someillustrious client:
_But for the nonce, on mother's breast, Sweet wee pleader, take thy rest._Presently again he was an officer under fire, in a brilliantuniform, on a prancing charger, victorious in battle, like thegreat Generals whose portraits she had seen one Sunday at Versailles:
_But for the nonce, on mother's breast, Sweet wee general, take thy rest._But when night was creeping into the room, a new picture woulddazzle her eyes, a picture this of other and incomparably greaterglories.
Proud in her motherhood, yet humble too at heart, she was gazingfrom the dim recesses of a sanctuary at her son, her Jean, cladin sacerdotal vestments, lifting the monstrance in the vaultedchoir censed by the beating wings of half-seen Cherubim. And shewould tremble awestruck as if she were the mother of a god, thispoor sick work-woman whose puling child lay beside her droopingin the poisoned air of a back-shop:
_But for the nonce, on mother's breast, My sweet boy-bishop, take thy rest._One evening, as her husband handed her a cooling drink, she saidto him in a tone of regret:
"Why did you disturb me? I could see the Holy Virgin among flowersand precious stones and lights. It was so beautiful! so beautiful!"She said she was no longer in pain, that she wished her Jean tolearn Latin. And she passed away.