Why was their neighbor, M.Gerard, there so early in the morning, and with great tears rolling down his cheeks too?
He kept beside M.Violette, as if watching him, and patted him upon the back affectionately, saying: "Now then, my poor friend! Have courage, courage!" But the poor friend had no more.

He let M.Gerard take the child from him, and then his head fell like a dead person's upon the good engraver's shoulder, and he began to weep with heavy sobs that shook his whole body.
"Mamma! See mamma!" cried the little Amedee, full of terror.
Alas! he never will see her again! At the Gerards, where they carried him and the kind neighbor dressed him, they told him that his mother had gone for a long time, a very long time; that he must love his papa very much and think only of him; and other things that he could not understand and dared not ask the meaning of, but which filled him with consternation.
It was strange! The engraver and his wife busied themselves entirely with him, watching him every moment.

The little ones, too, treated him in a singular, almost respectful manner.

What had caused such a change?
Louise did not open her piano, and when little Maria wished to take her "menagerie" from the lower part of the buffet, Madame Gerard said sharply, as she wiped the tears from her eyes: "You must not play to-day." After breakfast Madame Gerard put on her hat and shawl and went out, taking Amedee with her.

They got into a carriage that took them through streets that the child did not know, across a bridge in the middle of which stood a large brass horseman, with his head crowned with laurel, and stopped before a large house and entered with the crowd, where a very agile and rapid young man put some black clothes on Amedee.
On their return the child found his father seated at the dining-room table with M.Gerard, and both of them were writing addresses upon large sheets of paper bordered with black.