“The most terrible sorrows are those which find 
no voice.” As to the father, he contented him-
self with saying, half stupidly, half dreamily, 
“After all, it is perhaps for the best; he was 
sure to finish badly.” 
However, the body was stretched on my di-
van, and, with the aid of a servant I was busy-
ing myself with the final preparations when the 
mother came into my studio. She wished, she 
said, to see the body of her son. I could not, of 
course, prevent her from intoxicating herself 
with her unhappiness; I could not refuse her 
this supreme, this sombre consolation. By and 
by she begged me to show her the place where 
her little boy had hanged himself. “Oh no,” I 
answered her; “that will do you no good,” and 
as, involuntarily, my eyes turned towards the 
fatal wardrobe, I saw, with disgust mingles 
with horror and anger, that the nail remained 
fixed in the wall with a long piece of rope still 
hanging to it. I darted forward rapidly to tear 
down these last traces of the catastrophe, and 
as I was going to throw them out of the open 
window the poor woman seized my arm and 
said to me in a voice too earnest to resist, “Oh 
Sir, leave me that; I beg you, I beseech you.” 
Her despair had doubtless, it seemed to me, so 
disturbed her brain that it had begotten a ten-
derness for the instrument of her son’s death,