If it were impossible to love this son any longer, she could still suffer for him.

Quivering with this last expression of motherhood, she wept as she saw the brilliant staff officer of the Emperor turn to enter tobacconist's and pause on the threshold; he had felt in his pocket and found nothing.

Agathe left the bridge, crossed the quai rapidly, took out her purse, thrust it into Philippe's hand, and fled away as if she had committed a crime.

After that, she ate nothing for two days; before her was the horrible vision of her son dying of hunger in the streets of Paris.
"When he has spent all the money in my purse, who will give him any ?" she thought.

"Giroudeau did not deceive us; Philippe is just out of that hospital." She no longer saw the assassin of her poor aunt, the scourge of the family, the domestic thief, the gambler, the drunkard, the low liver of a bad life; she saw only the man recovering from illness, yet doomed to die of starvation, the smoker deprived of his tobacco.