We lived formerly in a little house beside the high road outside the
village. He had set up in business as a wheelwright, after marrying
the daughter of a farmer of the neighborhood, and as they were both
industrious, they managed to save up a nice little fortune. But they had
no children, and this caused them great sorrow. Finally a son was born,
whom they named Jean. They both loved and petted him, enfolding him with
their affection, and were unwilling to let him be out of their sight.
When he was five years old some mountebanks passed through the country
and set up their tent in the town hall square.
Jean, who had seen them pass by, made his escape from the house, and
after his father had made a long search for him, he found him among the
learned goats and trick dogs, uttering shouts of laughter and sitting on
the knees of an old clown.
Three days later, just as they were sitting down to dinner, the
wheelwright and his wife noticed that their son was not in the house.
They looked for him in the garden, and as they did not find him, his
father went out into the road and shouted at the top of his voice,
“Jean!”
Night came on. A brown vapor arose making distant objects look still
farther away and giving them a dismal, weird appearance. Three tall
pines, close at hand, seemed to be weeping. Still there was no reply,
but the air appeared to be full of indistinct sighing. The father
listened for some time, thinking he heard a sound first in one
direction, then in another, and, almost beside himself, he ran, out into
the night, calling incessantly “Jean! Jean!”
He ran along thus until daybreak, filling the darkness with his shouts,
terrifying stray animals, torn by a terrible anguish and fearing that he
was losing his mind. His wife, seated on the stone step of their home,
sobbed until morning.
They did not find their son. They both aged rapidly in their
inconsolable sorrow. Finally they sold their house and set out to search
together.
They inquired of the shepherds on the hillsides, of the tradesmen
passing by, of the peasants in the villages and of the authorities
in the towns. But their boy had been lost a long time and no one knew
anything about him. He had probably forgotten his own name by this
time and also the name of his village, and his parents wept in silence,
having lost hope.
Before long their money came to an end, and they worked out by the day
in the farms and inns, doing the most menial work, eating what was left
from the tables, sleeping on the ground and suffering from cold. Then as
they became enfeebled by hard work no one would employ them any
longer, and they were forced to beg along the high roads. They accosted
passers-by in an entreating voice and with sad, discouraged faces; they
begged a morsel of bread from the harvesters who were dining around a
tree in the fields at noon, and they ate in silence seated on the edge
of a ditch. An innkeeper to whom they told their story said to them one
day:
“I know some one who had lost their daughter, and they found her in
Paris.”
They at once set out for Paris.
When they entered the great city they were bewildered by its size and by
the crowds that they saw. But they knew that Jean must be in the midst
of all these people, though they did not know how to set about looking
for him. Then they feared that they might not recognize him, for he was
only five years old when they last saw him.
They visited every place, went through all the streets, stopping
whenever they saw a group of people, hoping for some providential
meeting, some extraordinary luck, some compassionate fate.
They frequently walked at haphazard straight ahead, leaning one against
the other, looking so sad and poverty-stricken that people would give
them alms without their asking.
They spent every Sunday at the doors of the churches, watching the
crowds entering and leaving, trying to distinguish among the faces one
that might be familiar. Several times they thought they recognized him,
but always found they had made a mistake.
In the vestibule of one of the churches which they visited the most
frequently there was an old dispenser of holy Water who had become their
friend. He also had a very sad history, and their sympathy for him had
established a bond of close friendship between them. It ended by them
all three living together in a poor lodging on the top floor of a large
house situated at some distance, quite on the outskirts of the city,
and the wheelwright would sometimes take his new friend's place at the
church when the latter was ill.
Winter came, a very severe winter. The poor holy water sprinkler died
and the parish priest appointed the wheelwright, whose misfortunes had
come to his knowledge, to replace him. He went every morning and sat in
the same place, on the same chair, wearing away the old stone pillar by
continually leaning against it. He would gaze steadily at every man who
entered the church and looked forward to Sunday with as much impatience
as a schoolboy, for on that day the church was filled with people from
morning till night.
He became very old, growing weaker each day from the dampness of the
church, and his hope oozed away gradually.
He now knew by sight all the people who came to the services; he knew
their hours, their manners, could distinguish their step on the stone
pavement.
His interests had become so contracted that the entrance of a stranger
in the church was for him a great event. One day two ladies came in; one
was old, the other young--a mother and daughter probably. Behind them
came a man who was following them. He bowed to them as they came out,
and after offering them some holy water, he took the arm of the elder
lady.
“That must be the fiance of the younger one,” thought the wheelwright.
And until evening he kept trying to recall where he had formerly seen a
young man who resembled this one. But the one he was thinking of must be
an old man by this time, for it seemed as if he had known him down home
in his youth.
The same man frequently came again to walk home with the ladies, and
this vague, distant, familiar resemblance which he could not place
worried the old man so much that he made his wife come with him to see
if she could help his impaired memory.
One evening as it was growing dusk the three strangers entered together.
When they had passed the old man said:
“Well, do you know him?”
His wife anxiously tried to ransack her memory. Suddenly she said in a
low tone:
“Yes--yes--but he is darker, taller, stouter and is dressed like a
gentleman, but, father, all the same, it is your face when you were
young!”
The old man started violently.
It was true. He looked like himself and also like his brother who was
dead, and like his father, whom he remembered while he was yet young.
The old couple were so affected that they could not speak. The three
persons came out and were about to leave the church.
The man touched his finger to the holy water sprinkler. Then the old
man, whose hand was trembling so that he was fairly sprinkling the
ground with holy water, exclaimed:
“Jean!”
The young man stopped and looked at him.
He repeated in a lower tone:
“Jean!”
The two women looked at them without understanding.
He then said for the third time, sobbing as he did so:
“Jean!”
The man stooped down, with his face close to the old man's, and as a
memory of his childhood dawned on him he replied:
“Papa Pierre, Mamma Jeanne!”
He had forgotten everything, his father's surname and the name of his
native place, but he always remembered those two words that he had so
often repeated: “Papa Pierre, Mamma Jeanne.”
He sank to the floor, his face on the old man's knees, and he wept,
kissing now his father and then his mother, while they were almost
breathless from intense joy.
The two ladies also wept, understanding as they did that some great
happiness had come to pass.
Then they all went to the young man's house and he told them his
history. The circus people had carried him off. For three years he
traveled with them in various countries. Then the troupe disbanded,
and one day an old lady in a chateau had paid to have him stay with her
because she liked his appearance. As he was intelligent, he was sent to
school, then to college, and the old lady having no children, had left
him all her money. He, for his part, had tried to find his parents, but
as he could remember only the two names, “Papa Pierre, Mamma Jeanne,”
he had been unable to do so. Now he was about to be married, and he
introduced his fiancee, who was very good and very pretty.
When the two old people had told their story in their turn he kissed
them once more. They sat up very late that night, not daring to retire
lest the happiness they had so long sought should escape them again
while they were asleep.
But misfortune had lost its hold on them and they were happy for the
rest of their lives.