The good lady, who had passed the half century, shut herself up in this solitary retreat, where along with her son Camille and her niece Therese, she partook of serene joy.
Although Camille was then twenty, his mother continued to spoil him like a little child.

She adored him because she had shielded him from death, throughout a tedious childhood of constant suffering.

The boy contracted every fever, every imaginable malady, one after the other.

Madame Raquin struggled for fifteen years against these terrible evils, which arrived in rapid succession to tear her son away from her.

She vanquished them all by patience, care, and adoration.