However, M. Vigneron struggled against it all, and, averting his head, began energetically protesting: “How! You’ll be dead? What an idea! It’s absurd to have such ideas as that!”
Meantime, Madame Vigneron was sobbing. “You wicked child,” she gasped; “how can you make us so unhappy, when we already have such a cruel loss to deplore?”
Gustave had to kiss them, and to promise them that he would live for their sakes. Yet he did not cease smiling, conscious as he was that a lie is necessary when one does not wish to be too miserable, and quite prepared, moreover, to leave his parents happy behind him, since even the Blessed Virgin herself was powerless to grant him in this world the little happy lot to which each creature should be born.
His mother took him back to bed, and Pierre at length
