“'Who is it that you have fallen in love with, my poor fellow?' she

asked.

“He answered without hesitation:

“'With Louise, Madame le Baronne.'

“My mother said with the utmost gravity: 'We must try to arrange this

matter the best way we can.'

“So Louise was sent for and questioned by my mother; and she said in

reply that she knew all about Jean's liking for her, that in fact Jean

had spoken to her about it several times, but that she did not want him.

She refused to say why.

“And two months elapsed during which my father and mother never ceased

to urge this girl to marry Jean. As she declared she was not in love

with any other man, she could not give any serious reason for her

refusal. My father at last overcame her resistance by means of a big

present of money, and started the pair of them on a farm—this very farm.

I did not see them for three years, and then I learned that Louise had

died of consumption. But my father and mother died, too, in their turn,

and it was two years more before I found myself face to face with Jean.

“At last one autumn day about the end of October the idea came into my

head to go hunting on this part of my estate, which my father had told

me was full of game.

“So one evening, one wet evening, I arrived at this house. I was shocked

to find my father's old servant with perfectly white hair, though he was

not more than forty-five or forty-six years of age. I made him dine with

me, at the very table where we are now sitting. It was raining hard. We

could hear the rain battering at the roof, the walls, and the windows,

flowing in a perfect deluge into the farmyard; and my dog was howling in

the shed where the other dogs are howling to-night.

“All of a sudden, when the servant-maid had gone to bed, the man said in

a timid voice:

“'M'sieu le Baron.'

“'What is it, my dear Jean?'

“'I have something to tell you.'

“'Tell it, my dear Jean.'

“'You remember Louise, my wife.'

“'Certainly, I remember her.'

“'Well, she left me a message for you.'

“'What was it?'

“'A—a—well, it was what you might call a confession.'

“'Ha—and what was it about?'

“'It was—it was—I'd rather, all the same, tell you nothing about it—but

I must—I must. Well, it's this—it wasn't consumption she died of at all.

It was grief—well, that's the long and short of it. As soon as she came

to live here after we were married, she grew thin; she changed so that

you wouldn't know her, M'sieu le Baron. She was just as I was before I

married her, but it was just the opposite, just the opposite.

“'I sent for the doctor. He said it was her liver that was affected—he

said it was what he called a “hepatic” complaint—I don't know these big

words, M'sieu le Baron. Then I bought medicine for her, heaps on heaps

of bottles that cost about three hundred francs. But she'd take none of

them; she wouldn't have them; she said: “It's no use, my poor Jean; it

wouldn't do me any good.” I saw well that she had some hidden trouble;

and then I found her one time crying, and I didn't know what to do, no,

I didn't know what to do. I bought her caps, and dresses, and hair oil,

and earrings. Nothing did her any good. And I saw that she was going to

die. And so one night at the end of November, one snowy night, after she

had been in bed the whole day, she told me to send for the cure. So I

went for him. As soon as he came—'

“'Jean,' she said, 'I am going to make a confession to you. I owe it to

you, Jean. I have never been false to you, never! never, before or after

you married me. M'sieu le Cure is there, and can tell you so; he knows

my soul. Well, listen, Jean. If I am dying, it is because I was not able

to console myself for leaving the chateau, because I was too fond of the

young Baron Monsieur Rene, too fond of him, mind you, Jean, there was no

harm in it! This is the thing that's killing me. When I could see him no

more I felt that I should die. If I could only have seen him, I might

have lived, only seen him, nothing more. I wish you'd tell him some day,

by and by, when I am no longer here. You will tell him, swear you, will,

Jean—swear it—in the presence of M'sieu le Cure! It will console me to

know that he will know it one day, that this was the cause of my death!

Swear it!'

“'Well, I gave her my promise, M'sieu le Baron, and on the faith of an

honest man I have kept my word.'

“And then he ceased speaking, his eyes filling with tears.

“Good God! my dear boy, you can't form any idea of the emotion that

filled me when I heard this poor devil, whose wife I had killed without

suspecting it, telling me this story on that wet night in this very

kitchen.

“I exclaimed: 'Ah! my poor Jean! my poor Jean!'

“He murmured: 'Well, that's all, M'sieu le Baron. I could not help it,

one way or the other—and now it's all over!'

“I caught his hand across the table, and I began to weep.

“He asked, 'Will you come and see her grave?' I nodded assent, for I

couldn't speak. He rose, lighted a lantern, and we walked through the

blinding rain by the light of the lantern.

“He opened a gate, and I saw some crosses of black wood.

“Suddenly he stopped before a marble slab and said: 'There it is,' and

he flashed the lantern close to it so that I could read the inscription:

“'TO LOUISE HORTENSE MARINET, “'Wife of Jean-Francois Lebrument, Farmer,

“'SHE WAS A FAITHFUL WIFE. GOD REST HER SOUL.'

“We fell on our knees in the damp grass, he and I, with the lantern

between us, and I saw the rain beating on the white marble slab. And I

thought of the heart of her sleeping there in her grave. Ah! poor heart!

poor heart! Since then I come here every year. And I don't know why, but

I feel as if I were guilty of some crime in the presence of this man who

always looks as if he forgave me.”

THE DEVIL

The peasant and the doctor stood on opposite sides of the bed, beside

the old, dying woman. She was calm and resigned and her mind quite clear

as she looked at them and listened to their conversation. She was going

to die, and she did not rebel at it, for her time was come, as she was

ninety-two.

The July sun streamed in at the window and the open door and cast its

hot flames on the uneven brown clay floor, which had been stamped down

by four generations of clodhoppers. The smell of the fields came in

also, driven by the sharp wind and parched by the noontide heat. The

grass-hoppers chirped themselves hoarse, and filled the country with

their shrill noise, which was like that of the wooden toys which are

sold to children at fair time.

The doctor raised his voice and said: “Honore, you cannot leave your

mother in this state; she may die at any moment.” And the peasant, in

great distress, replied: “But I must get in my wheat, for it has been

lying on the ground a long time, and the weather is just right for it;

what do you say about it, mother?” And the dying old woman, still

tormented by her Norman avariciousness, replied yes with her eyes and

her forehead, and thus urged her son to get in his wheat, and to leave

her to die alone.

But the doctor got angry, and, stamping his foot, he said: “You are no

better than a brute, do you hear, and I will not allow you to do it, do

you understand? And if you must get in your wheat today, go and fetch

Rapet's wife and make her look after your mother; I will have it, do you

understand me? And if you do not obey me, I will let you die like a dog,

when you are ill in your turn; do you hear?”

The peasant, a tall, thin fellow with slow movements, who was tormented

by indecision, by his fear of the doctor and his fierce love of saving,

hesitated, calculated, and stammered out: “How much does La Rapet charge

for attending sick people?” “How should I know?” the doctor cried. “That

depends upon how long she is needed. Settle it with her, by Heaven! But

I want her to be here within an hour, do you hear?”

So the man decided. “I will go for her,” he replied; “don't get angry,

doctor.” And the latter left, calling out as he went: “Be careful, be

very careful, you know, for I do not joke when I am angry!” As soon as

they were alone the peasant turned to his mother and said in a resigned

voice: “I will go and fetch La Rapet, as the man will have it. Don't

worry till I get back.”

And he went out in his turn.

La Rapet, old was an old washerwoman, watched the dead and the dying of

the neighborhood, and then, as soon as she had sewn her customers into

that linen cloth from which they would emerge no more, she went and took

up her iron to smooth out the linen of the living. Wrinkled like a last

year's apple, spiteful, envious, avaricious with a phenomenal avarice,

bent double, as if she had been broken in half across the loins by the

constant motion of passing the iron over the linen, one might have said

that she had a kind of abnormal and cynical love of a death struggle.

She never spoke of anything but of the people she had seen die, of the

various kinds of deaths at which she had been present, and she related

with the greatest minuteness details which were always similar, just as

a sportsman recounts his luck.

When Honore Bontemps entered her cottage, he found her preparing the

starch for the collars of the women villagers, and he said: “Good-

evening; I hope you are pretty well, Mother Rapet?”

She turned her head round to look at him, and said: “As usual, as usual,

and you?” “Oh! as for me, I am as well as I could wish, but my mother is

not well.” “Your mother?” “Yes, my mother!” “What is the matter with

her?” “She is going to turn up her toes, that's what's the matter with

her!”

The old woman took her hands out of the water and asked with sudden

sympathy: “Is she as bad as all that?” “The doctor says she will not

last till morning.” “Then she certainly is very bad!” Honore hesitated,

for he wanted to make a few preparatory remarks before coming to his

proposition; but as he could hit upon nothing, he made up his mind

suddenly.

“How much will you ask to stay with her till the end? You know that I am

not rich, and I can not even afford to keep a servant girl. It is just

that which has brought my poor mother to this state—too much worry and

fatigue! She did the work of ten, in spite of her ninety-two years. You

don't find any made of that stuff nowadays!”

La Rapet answered gravely: “There are two prices: Forty sous by day and

three francs by night for the rich, and twenty sous by day and forty by

night for the others. You shall pay me the twenty and forty.” But the,

peasant reflected, for he knew his mother well. He knew how tenacious of

life, how vigorous and unyielding she was, and she might last another

week, in spite of the doctor's opinion; and so he said resolutely: “No,

I would rather you would fix a price for the whole time until the end. I

will take my chance, one way or the other. The doctor says she will die

very soon. If that happens, so much the better for you, and so much the

worse for her, but if she holds out till to-morrow or longer, so much

the better for her and so much the worse for you!”

The nurse looked at the man in astonishment, for she had never treated a

death as a speculation, and she hesitated, tempted by the idea of the

possible gain, but she suspected that he wanted to play her a trick. “I

can say nothing until I have seen your mother,” she replied.

“Then come with me and see her.”

She washed her hands, and went with him immediately.

They did not speak on the road; she walked with short, hasty steps,

while he strode on with his long legs, as if he were crossing a brook at

every step.

The cows lying down in the fields, overcome by the heat, raised their

heads heavily and lowed feebly at the two passers-by, as if to ask them

for some green grass.

When they got near the house, Honore Bontemps murmured: “Suppose it is

all over?” And his unconscious wish that it might be so showed itself in

the sound of his voice.

But the old woman was not dead. She was lying on her back, on her

wretched bed, her hands covered with a purple cotton counterpane,

horribly thin, knotty hands, like the claws of strange animals, like

crabs, half closed by rheumatism, fatigue and the work of nearly a

century which she had accomplished.

La Rapet went up to the bed and looked at the dying woman, felt her

pulse, tapped her on the chest, listened to her breathing, and asked her

questions, so as to hear her speak; and then, having looked at her for

some time, she went out of the room, followed by Honore. Her decided

opinion was that the old woman would not last till night. He asked:

“Well?” And the sick-nurse replied: “Well, she may last two days,

perhaps three. You will have to give me six francs, everything

included.”

“Six francs! six francs!” he shouted. “Are you out of your mind? I tell

you she cannot last more than five or six hours!” And they disputed

angrily for some time, but as the nurse said she must go home, as the

time was going by, and as his wheat would not come to the farmyard of

its own accord, he finally agreed to her terms.

“Very well, then, that is settled; six francs, including everything,

until the corpse is taken out.”

And he went away, with long strides, to his wheat which was lying on the

ground under the hot sun which ripens the grain, while the sick-nurse

went in again to the house.

She had brought some work with her, for she worked without ceasing by

the side of the dead and dying, sometimes for herself, sometimes for the

family which employed her as seamstress and paid her rather more in that

capacity. Suddenly, she asked: “Have you received the last sacraments,

Mother Bontemps?”

The old peasant woman shook her head, and La Rapet, who was very devout,

got up quickly:

“Good heavens, is it possible? I will go and fetch the cure”; and she

rushed off to the parsonage so quickly that the urchins in the street

thought some accident had happened, when they saw her running.

The priest came immediately in his surplice, preceded by a choir boy who

rang a bell to announce the passage of the Host through the parched and

quiet country. Some men who were working at a distance took off their

large hats and remained motionless until the white vestment had

disappeared behind some farm buildings; the women who were making up the

sheaves stood up to make the sign of the cross; the frightened black

hens ran away along the ditch until they reached a well-known hole,

through which they suddenly disappeared, while a foal which was tied in

a meadow took fright at the sight of the surplice and began to gallop

round and round, kicking cut every now and then. The acolyte, in his red

cassock, walked quickly, and the priest, with his head inclined toward

one shoulder and his square biretta on his head, followed him, muttering

some prayers; while last of all came La Rapet, bent almost double as if

she wished to prostrate herself, as she walked with folded hands as they

do in church.

Honore saw them pass in the distance, and he asked: “Where is our priest

going?” His man, who was more intelligent, replied: “He is taking the

sacrament to your mother, of course!”

The peasant was not surprised, and said: “That may be,” and went on with

his work.

Mother Bontemps confessed, received absolution and communion, and the

priest took his departure, leaving the two women alone in the

suffocating room, while La Rapet began to look at the dying woman, and

to ask herself whether it could last much longer.

The day was on the wane, and gusts of cooler air began to blow, causing

a view of Epinal, which was fastened to the wall by two pins, to flap up

and down; the scanty window curtains, which had formerly been white, but

were now yellow and covered with fly-specks, looked as if they were

going to fly off, as if they were struggling to get away, like the old

woman's soul.

Lying motionless, with her eyes open, she seemed to await with

indifference that death which was so near and which yet delayed its

coming. Her short breathing whistled in her constricted throat. It would

stop altogether soon, and there would be one woman less in the world; no

one would regret her.

At nightfall Honore returned, and when he went up to the bed and saw

that his mother was still alive, he asked: “How is she?” just as he had

done formerly when she had been ailing, and then he sent La Rapet away,

saying to her: “To-morrow morning at five o'clock, without fail.” And

she replied: “To-morrow, at five o'clock.”

She came at daybreak, and found Honore eating his soup, which he had

made himself before going to work, and the sick-nurse asked him: “Well,

is your mother dead?” “She is rather better, on the contrary,” he

replied, with a sly look out of the corner of his eyes. And he went out.

La Rapet, seized with anxiety, went up to the dying woman, who remained

in the same state, lethargic and impassive, with her eyes open and her

hands clutching the counterpane. The nurse perceived that this might go

on thus for two days, four days, eight days, and her avaricious mind was

seized with fear, while she was furious at the sly fellow who had

tricked her, and at the woman who would not die.

Nevertheless, she began to work, and waited, looking intently at the

wrinkled face of Mother Bontemps. When Honore returned to breakfast he

seemed quite satisfied and even in a bantering humor. He was decidedly

getting in his wheat under very favorable circumstances.

La Rapet was becoming exasperated; every minute now seemed to her so

much time and money stolen from her. She felt a mad inclination to take

this old woman, this, headstrong old fool, this obstinate old wretch,

and to stop that short, rapid breath, which was robbing her of her time

and money, by squeezing her throat a little. But then she reflected on

the danger of doing so, and other thoughts came into her head; so she

went up to the bed and said: “Have you ever seen the Devil?” Mother

Bontemps murmured: “No.”

Then the sick-nurse began to talk and to tell her tales which were

likely to terrify the weak mind of the dying woman. Some minutes before

one dies the Devil appears, she said, to all who are in the death

throes. He has a broom in his hand, a saucepan on his head, and he

utters loud cries. When anybody sees him, all is over, and that person

has only a few moments longer to live. She then enumerated all those to

whom the Devil had appeared that year: Josephine Loisel, Eulalie Ratier,

Sophie Padaknau, Seraphine Grospied.

Mother Bontemps, who had at last become disturbed in mind, moved about,

wrung her hands, and tried to turn her head to look toward the end of

the room. Suddenly La Rapet disappeared at the foot of the bed. She took

a sheet out of the cupboard and wrapped herself up in it; she put the

iron saucepan on her head, so that its three short bent feet rose up

like horns, and she took a broom in her right hand and a tin pail in her

left, which she threw up suddenly, so that it might fall to the ground

noisily.

When it came down, it certainly made a terrible noise. Then, climbing

upon a chair, the nurse lifted up the curtain which hung at the bottom

of the bed, and showed herself, gesticulating and uttering shrill cries

into the iron saucepan which covered her face, while she menaced the old

peasant woman, who was nearly dead, with her broom.

Terrified, with an insane expression on her face, the dying woman made a

superhuman effort to get up and escape; she even got her shoulders and

chest out of bed; then she fell back with a deep sigh. All was over, and

La Rapet calmly put everything back into its place; the broom into the

corner by the cupboard the sheet inside it, the saucepan on the hearth,

the pail on the floor, and the chair against the wall. Then, with

professional movements, she closed the dead woman's large eyes, put a

plate on the bed and poured some holy water into it, placing in it the

twig of boxwood that had been nailed to the chest of drawers, and

kneeling down, she fervently repeated the prayers for the dead, which

she knew by heart, as a matter of business.

And when Honore returned in the evening he found her praying, and he

calculated immediately that she had made twenty sows out of him, for she

had only spent three days and one night there, which made five francs

altogether, instead of the six which he owed her.

THE SNIPE

Old Baron des Ravots had for forty years been the champion sportsman of

his province. But a stroke of paralysis had kept him in his chair for

the last five or six years. He could now only shoot pigeons from the

window of his drawing-room or from the top of his high doorsteps.

He spent his time in reading.

He was a good-natured business man, who had much of the literary spirit

of a former century. He worshipped anecdotes, those little risque

anecdotes, and also true stories of events that happened in his

neighborhood. As soon as a friend came to see him he asked:

“Well, anything new?”

And he knew how to worm out information like an examining lawyer.

On sunny days he had his large reclining chair, similar to a bed,

wheeled to the hall door. A man servant behind him held his guns, loaded

them and handed them to his master. Another valet, hidden in the bushes,

let fly a pigeon from time to time at irregular intervals, so that the

baron should be unprepared and be always on the watch.

And from morning till night he fired at the birds, much annoyed if he

were taken by surprise and laughing till he cried when the animal fell

straight to the earth or, turned over in some comical and unexpected

manner. He would turn to the man who was loading the gun and say, almost

choking with laughter:

“Did that get him, Joseph? Did you see how he fell?” Joseph invariably

replied:

“Oh, monsieur le baron never misses them.”

In autumn, when the shooting season opened, he invited his friends as he

had done formerly, and loved to hear them firing in the distance. He

counted the shots and was pleased when they followed each other rapidly.

And in the evening he made each guest give a faithful account of his

day. They remained three hours at table telling about their sport.

They were strange and improbable adventures in which the romancing

spirit of the sportsmen delighted. Some of them were memorable stories

and were repeated regularly. The story of a rabbit that little Vicomte

de Bourril had missed in his vestibule convulsed them with laughter each

year anew. Every five minutes a fresh speaker would say:

“I heard 'birr! birr!' and a magnificent covey rose at ten paces from

me. I aimed. Pif! paf! and I saw a shower, a veritable shower of birds.

There were seven of them!”

And they all went into raptures, amazed, but reciprocally credulous.

But there was an old custom in the house called “The Story of the

Snipe.”

Whenever this queen of birds was in season the same ceremony took place

at each dinner. As they worshipped this incomparable bird, each guest

ate one every evening, but the heads were all left in the dish.

Then the baron, acting the part of a bishop, had a plate brought to him

containing a little fat, and he carefully anointed the precious heads,

holding them by the tip of their slender, needle-like beak. A lighted

candle was placed beside him and everyone was silent in an anxiety of

expectation.

Then he took one of the heads thus prepared, stuck a pin through it and

stuck the pin on a cork, keeping the whole contrivance steady by means

of little crossed sticks, and carefully placed this object on the neck

of a bottle in the manner of a tourniquet.

All the guests counted simultaneously in a loud tone—

“One-two-three.”

And the baron with a fillip of the finger made this toy whirl round.

The guest to whom the long beak pointed when the head stopped became the

possessor of all the heads, a feast fit for a king, which made his

neighbors look askance.

He took them one by one and toasted them over the candle. The grease

sputtered, the roasting flesh smoked and the lucky winner ate the head,

holding it by the beak and uttering exclamations of enjoyment.

And at each head the diners, raising their glasses, drank to his health.

When he had finished the last head he was obliged, at the baron's

orders, to tell an anecdote to compensate the disappointed ones.

Here are some of the stories.

THE WILL

I knew that tall young fellow, Rene de Bourneval. He was an agreeable

man, though rather melancholy and seemed prejudiced against everything,

was very skeptical, and he could with a word tear down social hypocrisy.

He would often say:

“There are no honorable men, or, at least, they are only relatively so

when compared with those lower than themselves.”

He had two brothers, whom he never saw, the Messieurs de Courcils. I

always supposed they were by another father, on account of the

difference in the name. I had frequently heard that the family had a

strange history, but did not know the details. As I took a great liking

to Rene we soon became intimate friends, and one evening, when I had

been dining with him alone, I asked him, by chance: “Are you a son of

the first or second marriage?” He grew rather pale, and then flushed,

and did not speak for a few moments; he was visibly embarrassed. Then he

smiled in the melancholy, gentle manner, which was peculiar to him, and

said:

“My dear friend, if it will not weary you, I can give you some very

strange particulars about my life. I know that you are a sensible man,

so I do not fear that our friendship will suffer by my revelations; and

should it suffer, I should not care about having you for my friend any

longer.

“My mother, Madame de Courcils, was a poor little, timid woman, whom her

husband had married for the sake of her fortune, and her whole life was

one of martyrdom. Of a loving, timid, sensitive disposition, she was

constantly being ill-treated by the man who ought to have been my

father, one of those boors called country gentlemen. A month after their

marriage he was living a licentious life and carrying on liaisons with

the wives and daughters of his tenants. This did not prevent him from

having three children by his wife, that is, if you count me in. My

mother said nothing, and lived in that noisy house like a little mouse.

Set aside, unnoticed, nervous, she looked at people with her bright,

uneasy, restless eyes, the eyes of some terrified creature which can

never shake off its fear. And yet she was pretty, very pretty and fair,

a pale blonde, as if her hair had lost its color through her constant

fear.

“Among the friends of Monsieur de Courcils who constantly came to her

chateau, there was an ex-cavalry officer, a widower, a man who was

feared, who was at the same time tender and violent, capable of the most

determined resolves, Monsieur de Bourneval, whose name I bear. He was a

tall, thin man, with a heavy black mustache. I am very like him. He was

a man who had read a great deal, and his ideas were not like those of

most of his class. His great-grandmother had been a friend of J. J.

Rousseau's, and one might have said that he had inherited something of

this ancestral connection. He knew the Contrat Social, and the Nouvelle

Heloise by heart, and all those philosophical books which prepared in

advance the overthrow of our old usages, prejudices, superannuated laws

and imbecile morality.

“It seems that he loved my mother, and she loved him, but their liaison

was carried on so secretly that no one guessed at its existence. The

poor, neglected, unhappy woman must have clung to him in despair, and in

her intimacy with him must have imbibed all his ways of thinking,

theories of free thought, audacious ideas of independent love; but being

so timid she never ventured to speak out, and it was all driven back,

condensed, shut up in her heart.

“My two brothers were very hard towards her, like their father, and

never gave her a caress, and, accustomed to seeing her count for nothing

in the house, they treated her rather like a servant. I was the only one

of her sons who really loved her and whom she loved.

“When she died I was seventeen, and I must add, in order that you may

understand what follows, that a lawsuit between my father and mother had

been decided in my mother's favor, giving her the bulk of the property,

and, thanks to the tricks of the law, and the intelligent devotion of a

lawyer to her interests, the right to make her will in favor of whom she

pleased.

“We were told that there was a will at the lawyer's office and were

invited to be present at the reading of it. I can remember it, as if it

were yesterday. It was an imposing scene, dramatic, burlesque and

surprising, occasioned by the posthumous revolt of that dead woman, by

the cry for liberty, by the demands of that martyred one who had been

crushed by our oppression during her lifetime and who, from her closed

tomb, uttered a despairing appeal for independence.

“The man who believed he was my father, a stout, ruddy-faced man, who

looked like a butcher, and my brothers, two great fellows of twenty and

twenty-two, were waiting quietly in their chairs. Monsieur de Bourneval,

who had been invited to be present, came in and stood behind me. He was

very pale and bit his mustache, which was turning gray. No doubt he was

prepared for what was going to happen. The lawyer double-locked the door

and began to read the will, after having opened, in our presence, the

envelope, sealed with red wax, of the contents of which he was

ignorant.”

My friend stopped talking abruptly, and rising, took from his writing-

table an old paper, unfolded it, kissed it and then continued: “This is

the will of my beloved mother:

“'I, the undersigned, Anne Catherine-Genevieve-Mathilde de Croixluce,

the legitimate wife of Leopold-Joseph Gontran de Councils sound in body

and mind, here express my last wishes.

“I first of all ask God, and then my dear son Rene to pardon me for the

act I am about to commit. I believe that my child's heart is great

enough to understand me, and to forgive me. I have suffered my whole

life long. I was married out of calculation, then despised,

misunderstood, oppressed and constantly deceived by my husband.

“'I forgive him, but I owe him nothing.

“'My elder sons never loved me, never petted me, scarcely treated me as

a mother, but during my whole life I did my duty towards them, and I owe

them nothing more after my death. The ties of blood cannot exist without

daily and constant affection. An ungrateful son is less than a stranger;

he is a culprit, for he has no right to be indifferent towards his

mother.

“'I have always trembled before men, before their unjust laws, their

inhuman customs, their shameful prejudices. Before God, I have no longer

any fear. Dead, I fling aside disgraceful hypocrisy; I dare to speak my

thoughts, and to avow and to sign the secret of my heart.

“'I therefore leave that part of my fortune of which the law allows me

to dispose, in trust to my dear lover, Pierre-Germer-Simon de Bourneval,

to revert afterwards to our dear son Rene.

“'(This bequest is specified more precisely in a deed drawn up by a

notary.)

“'And I declare before the Supreme Judge who hears me, that I should

have cursed heaven and my own existence, if I had not found the deep,

devoted, tender, unshaken affection of my lover; if I had not felt in

his arms that the Creator made His creatures to love, sustain and

console each other, and to weep together in the hours of sadness.

“'Monsieur de Courcils is the father of my two eldest sons; Rene, alone,

owes his life to Monsieur de Bourneval. I pray the Master of men and of

their destinies, to place father and son above social prejudices, to

make them love each other until they die, and to love me also in my

coffin.

“'These are my last thoughts, and my last wish.

“'MATHILDE DE CROIXLUCE.'”

“Monsieur de Courcils had risen and he cried:

“'It is the will of a madwoman.'

“Then Monsieur de Bourneval stepped forward and said in a loud,

penetrating voice: 'I, Simon de Bourneval, solemnly declare that this

writing contains nothing but the strict truth, and I am ready to prove

it by letters which I possess.'

“On hearing that, Monsieur de Courcils went up to him, and I thought

that they were going to attack each other. There they stood, both of

them tall, one stout and the other thin, both trembling. My mother's

husband stammered out: 'You are a worthless wretch!' And the other

replied in a loud, dry voice: 'We will meet elsewhere, monsieur. I

should have already slapped your ugly face and challenged you long since

if I had not, before everything else, thought of the peace of mind

during her lifetime of that poor woman whom you caused to suffer so

greatly.'

“Then, turning to me, he said: 'You are my son; will you come with me? I

have no right to take you away, but I shall assume it, if you are

willing to come with me: I shook his hand without replying, and we went

out together. I was certainly three parts mad.

“Two days later Monsieur de Bourneval killed Monsieur de Courcils in a

duel. My brothers, to avoid a terrible scandal, held their tongues. I

offered them and they accepted half the fortune which my mother had left

me. I took my real father's name, renouncing that which the law gave me,

but which was not really mine. Monsieur de Bourneval died three years

later and I am still inconsolable.”

He rose from his chair, walked up and down the room, and, standing in

front of me, said:

“Well, I say that my mother's will was one of the most beautiful, the

most loyal, as well as one of the grandest acts that a woman could

perform. Do you not think so?”

I held out both hands to him, saying:

“I most certainly do, my friend.”

WALTER SCHNAFFS' ADVENTURE

Ever since he entered France with the invading army Walter Schnaffs had

considered himself the most unfortunate of men. He was large, had

difficulty in walking, was short of breath and suffered frightfully with

his feet, which were very flat and very fat. But he was a peaceful,

benevolent man, not warlike or sanguinary, the father of four children

whom he adored, and married to a little blonde whose little

tendernesses, attentions and kisses he recalled with despair every

evening. He liked to rise late and retire early, to eat good things in a

leisurely manner and to drink beer in the saloon. He reflected, besides,

that all that is sweet in existence vanishes with life, and he

maintained in his heart a fearful hatred, instinctive as well as

logical, for cannon, rifles, revolvers and swords, but especially for

bayonets, feeling that he was unable to dodge this dangerous weapon

rapidly enough to protect his big paunch.

And when night fell and he lay on the ground, wrapped in his cape beside

his comrades who were snoring, he thought long and deeply about those he

had left behind and of the dangers in his path. “If he were killed what

would become of the little ones? Who would provide for them and bring

them up?” Just at present they were not rich, although he had borrowed

when he left so as to leave them some money. And Walter Schnaffs wept

when he thought of all this.

At the beginning of a battle his legs became so weak that he would have

fallen if he had not reflected that the entire army would pass over his

body. The whistling of the bullets gave him gooseflesh.

For months he had lived thus in terror and anguish.

His company was marching on Normandy, and one day he was sent to

reconnoitre with a small detachment, simply to explore a portion of the

territory and to return at once. All seemed quiet in the country;

nothing indicated an armed resistance.

But as the Prussians were quietly descending into a little valley

traversed by deep ravines a sharp fusillade made them halt suddenly,

killing twenty of their men, and a company of sharpshooters, suddenly

emerging from a little wood as large as your hand, darted forward with

bayonets at the end of their rifles.

Walter Schnaffs remained motionless at first, so surprised and

bewildered that he did not even think of making his escape. Then he was

seized with a wild desire to run away, but he remembered at once that he

ran like a tortoise compared with those thin Frenchmen, who came

bounding along like a lot of goats. Perceiving a large ditch full of

brushwood covered with dead leaves about six paces in front of him, he

sprang into it with both feet together, without stopping to think of its

depth, just as one jumps from a bridge into the river.

He fell like an arrow through a thick layer of vines and thorny brambles

that tore his face and hands and landed heavily in a sitting posture on

a bed of stones. Raising his eyes, he saw the sky through the hole he

had made in falling through. This aperture might betray him, and he

crawled along carefully on hands and knees at the bottom of this ditch

beneath the covering of interlacing branches, going as fast as he could

and getting away from the scene of the skirmish. Presently he stopped

and sat down, crouched like a hare amid the tall dry grass.

He heard firing and cries and groans going on for some time. Then the

noise of fighting grew fainter and ceased. All was quiet and silent.

Suddenly something stirred, beside him. He was frightfully startled. It

was a little bird which had perched on a branch and was moving the dead

leaves. For almost an hour Walter Schnaffs' heart beat loud and rapidly.

Night fell, filling the ravine with its shadows. The soldier began to

think. What was he to do? What was to become of him? Should he rejoin

the army? But how? By what road? And he began over again the horrible

life of anguish, of terror, of fatigue and suffering that he had led

since the commencement of the war. No! He no longer had the courage! He

would not have the energy necessary to endure long marches and to face

the dangers to which one was exposed at every moment.

But what should he do? He could not stay in this ravine in concealment

until the end of hostilities. No, indeed! If it were not for having to

eat, this prospect would not have daunted him greatly. But he had to

eat, to eat every day.

And here he was, alone, armed and in uniform, on the enemy's territory,

far from those who would protect him. A shiver ran over him.

All at once he thought: “If I were only a prisoner!” And his heart

quivered with a longing, an intense desire to be taken prisoner by the

French. A prisoner, he would be saved, fed, housed, sheltered from

bullets and swords, without any apprehension whatever, in a good, well-

kept prison. A prisoner! What a dream:

His resolution was formed at once.

“I will constitute myself a prisoner.”

He rose, determined to put this plan into execution without a moment's

delay. But he stood motionless, suddenly a prey to disturbing

reflections and fresh terrors.

Where would he make himself a prisoner and how? In What direction? And

frightful pictures, pictures of death came into his mind.

He would run terrible danger in venturing alone through the country with

his pointed helmet.

Supposing he should meet some peasants. These peasants seeing a Prussian

who had lost his way, an unprotected Prussian, would kill him as if he

were a stray dog! They would murder him with their forks, their picks,

their scythes and their shovels. They would make a stew of him, a pie,

with the frenzy of exasperated, conquered enemies.

If he should meet the sharpshooters! These sharpshooters, madmen without

law or discipline, would shoot him just for amusement to pass an hour;

it would make them laugh to see his head. And he fancied he was already

leaning against a wall in-front of four rifles whose little black

apertures seemed to be gazing at him.

Supposing he should meet the French army itself. The vanguard would take

him for a scout, for some bold and sly trooper who had set off alone to

reconnoitre, and they would fire at him. And he could already hear, in

imagination, the irregular shots of soldiers lying in the brush, while

he himself, standing in the middle of the field, was sinking to the

earth, riddled like a sieve with bullets which he felt piercing his

flesh.

He sat down again in despair. His situation seemed hopeless.

It was quite a dark, black and silent night. He no longer budged,

trembling at all the slight and unfamiliar sounds that occur at night.

The sound of a rabbit crouching at the edge of his burrow almost made

him run. The cry of an owl caused him positive anguish, giving him a

nervous shock that pained like a wound. He opened his big eyes as wide

as possible to try and see through the darkness, and he imagined every

moment that he heard someone walking close beside him.

After interminable hours in which he suffered the tortures of the

damned, he noticed through his leafy cover that the sky was becoming

bright. He at once felt an intense relief. His limbs stretched out,

suddenly relaxed, his heart quieted down, his eyes closed; he fell

asleep.

When he awoke the sun appeared to be almost at the meridian. It must be

noon. No sound disturbed the gloomy silence. Walter Schnaffs noticed

that he was exceedingly hungry.

He yawned, his mouth watering at the thought of sausage, the good

sausage the soldiers have, and he felt a gnawing at his stomach.

He rose from the ground, walked a few steps, found that his legs were

weak and sat down to reflect. For two or three hours he again considered

the pros and cons, changing his mind every moment, baffled, unhappy,

torn by the most conflicting motives.

Finally he had an idea that seemed logical and practical. It was to

watch for a villager passing by alone, unarmed and with no dangerous

tools of his trade, and to run to him and give himself up, making him

understand that he was surrendering.

He took off his helmet, the point of which might betray him, and put his

head out of his hiding place with the utmost caution.

No solitary pedestrian could be perceived on the horizon. Yonder, to the

right, smoke rose from the chimney of a little village, smoke from

kitchen fires! And yonder, to the left, he saw at the end of an avenue

of trees a large turreted chateau. He waited till evening, suffering

frightfully from hunger, seeing nothing but flights of crows, hearing

nothing but the silent expostulation of his empty stomach.

And darkness once more fell on him.

He stretched himself out in his retreat and slept a feverish sleep,

haunted by nightmares, the sleep of a starving man.

Dawn again broke above his head and he began to make his observations.

But the landscape was deserted as on the previous day, and a new fear

came into Walter Schnaffs' mind—the fear of death by hunger! He pictured

himself lying at full length on his back at the bottom of his hiding

place, with his two eyes closed, and animals, little creatures of all

kinds, approached and began to feed on his dead body, attacking it all

over at once, gliding beneath his clothing to bite his cold flesh, and a

big crow pecked out his eyes with its sharp beak.

He almost became crazy, thinking he was going to faint and would not be

able to walk. And he was just preparing to rush off to the village,

determined to dare anything, to brave everything, when he perceived

three peasants walking to the fields with their forks across their

shoulders, and he dived back into his hiding place.

But as soon as it grew dark he slowly emerged from the ditch and started

off, stooping and fearful, with beating heart, towards the distant

chateau, preferring to go there rather than to the village, which seemed

to him as formidable as a den of tigers.

The lower windows were brilliantly lighted. One of them was open and

from it escaped a strong odor of roast meat, an odor which suddenly

penetrated to the olfactories and to the stomach of Walter Schnaffs,

tickling his nerves, making him breathe quickly, attracting him

irresistibly and inspiring his heart with the boldness of desperation.

And abruptly, without reflection, he placed himself, helmet on head, in

front of the window.

Eight servants were at dinner around a large table. But suddenly one of

the maids sat there, her mouth agape, her eyes fixed and letting fall

her glass. They all followed the direction of her gaze.

They saw the enemy!

Good God! The Prussians were attacking the chateau!

There was a shriek, only one shriek made up of eight shrieks uttered in

eight different keys, a terrific screaming of terror, then a tumultuous

rising from their seats, a jostling, a scrimmage and a wild rush to the

door at the farther end. Chairs fell over, the men knocked the women

down and walked over them. In two seconds the room was empty, deserted,

and the table, covered with eatables, stood in front of Walter Schnaffs,

lost in amazement and still standing at the window.

After some moments of hesitation he climbed in at the window and

approached the table. His fierce hunger caused him to tremble as if he

were in a fever, but fear still held him back, numbed him. He listened.

The entire house seemed to shudder. Doors closed, quick steps ran along

the floor above. The uneasy Prussian listened eagerly to these confused

sounds. Then he heard dull sounds, as though bodies were falling to the

ground at the foot of the walls, human beings jumping from the first

floor.

Then all motion, all disturbance ceased, and the great chateau became as

silent as the grave.

Walter Schnaffs sat down before a clean plate and began to eat. He took

great mouthfuls, as if he feared he might be interrupted before he had

swallowed enough. He shovelled the food into his mouth, open like a

trap, with both hands, and chunks of food went into his stomach,

swelling out his throat as it passed down. Now and then he stopped,

almost ready to burst like a stopped-up pipe. Then he would take the

cider jug and wash down his esophagus as one washes out a clogged rain

pipe.

He emptied all the plates, all the dishes and all the bottles. Then,

intoxicated with drink and food, besotted, red in the face, shaken by

hiccoughs, his mind clouded and his speech thick, he unbuttoned his

uniform in order to breathe or he could not have taken a step. His eyes

closed, his mind became torpid; he leaned his heavy forehead on his

folded arms on the table and gradually lost all consciousness of things

and events.

The last quarter of the moon above the trees in the park shed a faint

light on the landscape. It was the chill hour that precedes the dawn.

Numerous silent shadows glided among the trees and occasionally a blade

of steel gleamed in the shadow as a ray of moonlight struck it.

The quiet chateau stood there in dark outline. Only two windows were

still lighted up on the ground floor.

Suddenly a voice thundered:

“Forward! nom d'un nom! To the breach, my lads!”

And in an instant the doors, shutters and window panes fell in beneath a

wave of men who rushed in, breaking, destroying everything, and took the

house by storm. In a moment fifty soldiers, armed to the teeth, bounded

into the kitchen, where Walter Schnaffs was peacefully sleeping, and

placing to his breast fifty loaded rifles, they overturned him, rolled

him on the floor, seized him and tied his head and feet together.

He gasped in amazement, too besotted to understand, perplexed, bruised

and wild with fear.

Suddenly a big soldier, covered with gold lace, put his foot on his

stomach, shouting:

“You are my prisoner. Surrender!”

The Prussian heard only the one word “prisoner” and he sighed, “Ya, ya,

ya.”

He was raised from the floor, tied in a chair and examined with lively

curiosity by his victors, who were blowing like whales. Several of them

sat down, done up with excitement and fatigue.

He smiled, actually smiled, secure now that he was at last a prisoner.

Another officer came into the room and said:

“Colonel, the enemy has escaped; several seem to have been wounded. We

are in possession.”

The big officer, who was wiping his forehead, exclaimed: “Victory!”

And he wrote in a little business memorandum book which he took from his

pocket:

“After a desperate encounter the Prussians were obliged to beat a

retreat, carrying with them their dead and wounded, the number of whom

is estimated at fifty men. Several were taken prisoners.”

The young officer inquired:

“What steps shall I take, colonel?”

“We will retire in good order,” replied the colonel, “to avoid having to

return and make another attack with artillery and a larger force of

men.”

And he gave the command to set out.

The column drew up in line in the darkness beneath the walls of the

chateau and filed out, a guard of six soldiers with revolvers in their

hands surrounding Walter Schnaffs, who was firmly bound.

Scouts were sent ahead to reconnoitre. They advanced cautiously, halting

from time to time.

At daybreak they arrived at the district of La Roche-Oysel, whose

national guard had accomplished this feat of arms.

The uneasy and excited inhabitants were expecting them. When they saw

the prisoner's helmet tremendous shouts arose. The women raised their

arms in wonder, the old people wept. An old grandfather threw his crutch

at the Prussian and struck the nose of one of their own defenders.

The colonel roared:

“See that the prisoner is secure!”

At length they reached the town hall. The prison was opened and Walter

Schnaffs, freed from his bonds, cast into it. Two hundred armed men

mounted guard outside the building.

Then, in spite of the indigestion that had been troubling him for some

time, the Prussian, wild with joy, began to dance about, to dance

frantically, throwing out his arms and legs and uttering wild shouts

until he fell down exhausted beside the wall.

He was a prisoner-saved!

That was how the Chateau de Charnpignet was taken from the enemy after

only six hours of occupation.

Colonel Ratier, a cloth merchant, who had led the assault at the head of

a body of the national guard of La Roche-Oysel, was decorated with an

order.

AT SEA The following paragraphs recently appeared in the papers:

“Boulogne-Sur-Mer, January 22.—Our correspondent writes:

“A fearful accident has thrown our sea-faring population, which has

suffered so much in the last two years, into the greatest consternation.

The fishing smack commanded by Captain Javel, on entering the harbor was

wrecked on the rocks of the harbor breakwater.

“In spite of the efforts of the life boat and the shooting of life lines

from the shore four sailors and the cabin boy were lost.

“The rough weather continues. Fresh disasters are anticipated.”

Who is this Captain Javel? Is he the brother of the one-armed man?

If the poor man tossed about in the waves and dead, perhaps, beneath his

wrecked boat, is the one I am thinking of, he took part, just eighteen

years ago, in another tragedy, terrible and simple as are all these

fearful tragedies of the sea.

Javel, senior, was then master of a trawling smack.

The trawling smack is the ideal fishing boat. So solidly built that it

fears no weather, with a round bottom, tossed about unceasingly on the

waves like a cork, always on top, always thrashed by the harsh salt

winds of the English Channel, it ploughs the sea unweariedly with

bellying sail, dragging along at its side a huge trawling net, which

scours the depths of the ocean, and detaches and gathers in all the

animals asleep in the rocks, the flat fish glued to the sand, the heavy

crabs with their curved claws, and the lobsters with their pointed

mustaches.

When the breeze is fresh and the sea choppy, the boat starts in to

trawl. The net is fastened all along a big log of wood clamped with iron

and is let down by two ropes on pulleys at either end of the boat. And

the boat, driven by the wind and the tide, draws along this apparatus

which ransacks and plunders the depths of the sea.

Javel had on board his younger brother, four sailors and a cabin boy. He

had set sail from Boulogne on a beautiful day to go trawling.

But presently a wind sprang up, and a hurricane obliged the smack to run

to shore. She gained the English coast, but the high sea broke against

the rocks and dashed on the beach, making it impossible to go into port,

filling all the harbor entrances with foam and noise and danger.

The smack started off again, riding on the waves, tossed, shaken,

dripping, buffeted by masses of water, but game in spite of everything;

accustomed to this boisterous weather, which sometimes kept it roving

between the two neighboring countries without its being able to make

port in either.

At length the hurricane calmed down just as they were in the open, and

although the sea was still high the captain gave orders to cast the net.

So it was lifted overboard, and two men in the bows and two in the stern

began to unwind the ropes that held it. It suddenly touched bottom, but

a big wave made the boat heel, and Javel, junior, who was in the bows

directing the lowering of the net, staggered, and his arm was caught in

the rope which the shock had slipped from the pulley for an instant. He

made a desperate effort to raise the rope with the other hand, but the

net was down and the taut rope did not give.

The man cried out in agony. They all ran to his aid. His brother left

the rudder. They all seized the rope, trying to free the arm it was

bruising. But in vain. “We must cut it,” said a sailor, and he took from

his pocket a big knife, which, with two strokes, could save young

Javel's arm.

But if the rope were cut the trawling net would be lost, and this net

was worth money, a great deal of money, fifteen hundred francs. And it

belonged to Javel, senior, who was tenacious of his property.

“No, do not cut, wait, I will luff,” he cried, in great distress. And he

ran to the helm and turned the rudder. But the boat scarcely obeyed it,

being impeded by the net which kept it from going forward, and prevented

also by the force of the tide and the wind.

Javel, junior, had sunk on his knees, his teeth clenched, his eyes

haggard. He did not utter a word. His brother came back to him, in dread

of the sailor's knife.

“Wait, wait,” he said. “We will let down the anchor.”

They cast anchor, and then began to turn the capstan to loosen the

moorings of the net. They loosened them at length and disengaged the

imprisoned arm, in its bloody woolen sleeve.

Young Javel seemed like an idiot. They took off his jersey and saw a

horrible sight, a mass of flesh from which the blood spurted as if from

a pump. Then the young man looked at his arm and murmured: “Foutu” (done

for).

Then, as the blood was making a pool on the deck of the boat, one of the

sailors cried: “He will bleed to death, we must bind the vein.”

So they took a cord, a thick, brown, tarry cord, and twisting it around

the arm above the wound, tightened it with all their might. The blood

ceased to spurt by slow degrees, and, presently, stopped altogether.

Young Javel rose, his arm hanging at his side. He took hold of it with

the other hand, raised it, turned it over, shook it. It was all mashed,

the bones broken, the muscles alone holding it together. He looked at it

sadly, reflectively. Then he sat down on a folded sail and his comrades

advised him to keep wetting the arm constantly to prevent it from

mortifying.

They placed a pail of water beside him, and every few minutes he dipped

a glass into it and bathed the frightful wound, letting the clear water

trickle on to it.

“You would be better in the cabin,” said his brother. He went down, but

came up again in an hour, not caring to be alone. And, besides, he

preferred the fresh air. He sat down again on his sail and began to

bathe his arm.

They made a good haul. The broad fish with their white bellies lay

beside him, quivering in the throes of death; he looked at them as he

continued to bathe his crushed flesh.

As they were about to return to Boulogne the wind sprang up anew, and

the little boat resumed its mad course, bounding and tumbling about,

shaking up the poor wounded man.

Night came on. The sea ran high until dawn. As the sun rose the English

coast was again visible, but, as the weather had abated a little, they

turned back towards the French coast, tacking as they went.

Towards evening Javel, junior, called his comrades and showed them some

black spots, all the horrible tokens of mortification in the portion of

the arm below the broken bones.

The sailors examined it, giving their opinion.

“That might be the 'Black,'” thought one.

“He should put salt water on it,” said another.

They brought some salt water and poured it on the wound. The injured man

became livid, ground his teeth and writhed a little, but did not

exclaim.

Then, as soon as the smarting had abated, he said to his brother:

“Give me your knife.”

The brother handed it to him.

“Hold my arm up, quite straight, and pull it.”

They did as he asked them.

Then he began to cut off his arm. He cut gently, carefully, severing all

the tendons with this blade that was sharp as a razor. And, presently,

there was only a stump left. He gave a deep sigh and said:

“It had to be done. It was done for.”

He seemed relieved and breathed loud. He then began again to pour water

on the stump of arm that remained.

The sea was still rough and they could not make the shore.

When the day broke, Javel, junior, took the severed portion of his arm

and examined it for a long time. Gangrene had set in. His comrades also

examined it and handed it from one to the other, feeling it, turning it

over, and sniffing at it.

“You must throw that into the sea at once,” said his brother.

But Javel, junior, got angry.

“Oh, no! Oh, no! I don't want to. It belongs to me, does it not, as it

is my arm?”

And he took and placed it between his feet.

“It will putrefy, just the same,” said the older brother. Then an idea

came to the injured man. In order to preserve the fish when the boat was

long at sea, they packed it in salt, in barrels. He asked:

“Why can I not put it in pickle?”

“Why, that's a fact,” exclaimed the others.

Then they emptied one of the barrels, which was full from the haul of

the last few days; and right at the bottom of the barrel they laid the

detached arm. They covered it with salt, and then put back the fish one

by one.

One of the sailors said by way of joke:

“I hope we do not sell it at auction.”

And everyone laughed, except the two Javels.

The wind was still boisterous. They tacked within sight of Boulogne

until the following morning at ten o'clock. Young Javel continued to

bathe his wound. From time to time he rose and walked from one end to

the other of the boat.

His brother, who was at the tiller, followed him with glances, and shook

his head.

At last they ran into harbor.

The doctor examined the wound and pronounced it to be in good condition.

He dressed it properly and ordered the patient to rest. But Javel would

not go to bed until he got back his severed arm, and he returned at once

to the dock to look for the barrel which he had marked with a cross.

It was emptied before him and he seized the arm, which was well

preserved in the pickle, had shrunk and was freshened. He wrapped it up

in a towel he had brought for the purpose and took it home.

His wife and children looked for a long time at this fragment of their

father, feeling the fingers, and removing the grains of salt that were

under the nails. Then they sent for a carpenter to make a little coffin.

The next day the entire crew of the trawling smack followed the funeral

of the detached arm. The two brothers, side by side, led the procession;

the parish beadle carried the corpse under his arm.

Javel, junior, gave up the sea. He obtained a small position on the

dock, and when he subsequently talked about his accident, he would say

confidentially to his auditors:

“If my brother had been willing to cut away the net, I should still have

my arm, that is sure. But he was thinking only of his property.”

MINUET

Great misfortunes do not affect me very much, said John Bridelle, an old

bachelor who passed for a sceptic. I have seen war at quite close

quarters; I walked across corpses without any feeling of pity. The great

brutal facts of nature, or of humanity, may call forth cries of horror

or indignation, but do not cause us that tightening of the heart, that

shudder that goes down your spine at sight of certain little

heartrending episodes.

The greatest sorrow that anyone can experience is certainly the loss of

a child, to a mother; and the loss of his mother, to a man. It is

intense, terrible, it rends your heart and upsets your mind; but one is

healed of these shocks, just as large bleeding wounds become healed.

Certain meetings, certain things half perceived, or surmised, certain

secret sorrows, certain tricks of fate which awake in us a whole world

of painful thoughts, which suddenly unclose to us the mysterious door of

moral suffering, complicated, incurable; all the deeper because they

appear benign, all the more bitter because they are intangible, all the

more tenacious because they appear almost factitious, leave in our souls

a sort of trail of sadness, a taste of bitterness, a feeling of

disenchantment, from which it takes a long time to free ourselves.

I have always present to my mind two or three things that others would

surely not have noticed, but which penetrated my being like fine, sharp

incurable stings.

You might not perhaps understand the emotion that I retained from these

hasty impressions. I will tell you one of them. She was very old, but as

lively as a young girl. It may be that my imagination alone is

responsible for my emotion.

I am fifty. I was young then and studying law. I was rather sad,

somewhat of a dreamer, full of a pessimistic philosophy and did not care

much for noisy cafes, boisterous companions, or stupid girls. I rose

early and one of my chief enjoyments was to walk alone about eight

o'clock in the morning in the nursery garden of the Luxembourg.

You people never knew that nursery garden. It was like a forgotten

garden of the last century, as pretty as the gentle smile of an old

lady. Thick hedges divided the narrow regular paths,—peaceful paths

between two walls of carefully trimmed foliage. The gardener's great

shears were pruning unceasingly these leafy partitions, and here and

there one came across beds of flowers, lines of little trees looking

like schoolboys out for a walk, companies of magnificent rose bushes, or

regiments of fruit trees.

An entire corner of this charming spot was in habited by bees. Their

straw hives skillfully arranged at distances on boards had their

entrances—as large as the opening of a thimble—turned towards the sun,

and all along the paths one encountered these humming and gilded flies,

the true masters of this peaceful spot, the real promenaders of these

quiet paths.

I came there almost every morning. I sat down on a bench and read.

Sometimes I let my book fall on my knees, to dream, to listen to the

life of Paris around me, and to enjoy the infinite repose of these old-

fashioned hedges.

But I soon perceived that I was not the only one to frequent this spot

as soon as the gates were opened, and I occasionally met face to face,

at a turn in the path, a strange little old man.

He wore shoes with silver buckles, knee-breeches, a snuff-colored frock

coat, a lace jabot, and an outlandish gray hat with wide brim and long-

haired surface that might have come out of the ark.

He was thin, very thin, angular, grimacing and smiling. His bright eyes

were restless beneath his eyelids which blinked continuously. He always

carried in his hand a superb cane with a gold knob, which must have been

for him some glorious souvenir.

This good man astonished me at first, then caused me the intensest

interest. I watched him through the leafy walls, I followed him at a

distance, stopping at a turn in the hedge so as not to be seen.

And one morning when he thought he was quite alone, he began to make the

most remarkable motions. First he would give some little springs, then

make a bow; then, with his slim legs, he would give a lively spring in

the air, clapping his feet as he did so, and then turn round cleverly,

skipping and frisking about in a comical manner, smiling as if he had an

audience, twisting his poor little puppet-like body, bowing pathetic and

ridiculous little greetings into the empty air. He was dancing.

I stood petrified with amazement, asking myself which of us was crazy,

he or I.

He stopped suddenly, advanced as actors do on the stage, then bowed and

retreated with gracious smiles, and kissing his hand as actors do, his

trembling hand, to the two rows of trimmed bushes.

Then he continued his walk with a solemn demeanor.

After that I never lost sight of him, and each morning he began anew his

outlandish exercises.

I was wildly anxious to speak to him. I decided to risk it, and one day,

after greeting him, I said:

“It is a beautiful day, monsieur.”

He bowed.

“Yes, sir, the weather is just as it used to be.”

A week later we were friends and I knew his history. He had been a

dancing master at the opera, in the time of Louis XV. His beautiful cane

was a present from the Comte de Clermont. And when we spoke about

dancing he never stopping talking.

One day he said to me:

“I married La Castris, monsieur. I will introduce you to her if you wish

it, but she does not get here till later. This garden, you see, is our

delight and our life. It is all that remains of former days. It seems as

though we could not exist if we did not have it. It is old and

distingue, is it not? I seem to breathe an air here that has not changed

since I was young. My wife and I pass all our afternoons here, but I

come in the morning because I get up early.”

As soon as I had finished luncheon I returned to the Luxembourg, and

presently perceived my friend offering his arm ceremoniously to a very

old little lady dressed in black, to whom he introduced me. It was La

Castris, the great dancer, beloved by princes, beloved by the king,

beloved by all that century of gallantry that seems to have left behind

it in the world an atmosphere of love.

We sat down on a bench. It was the month of May. An odor of flowers

floated in the neat paths; a hot sun glided its rays between the

branches and covered us with patches of light. The black dress of La

Castris seemed to be saturated with sunlight.

The garden was empty. We heard the rattling of vehicles in the distance.

“Tell me,” I said to the old dancer, “what was the minuet?”

He gave a start.

“The minuet, monsieur, is the queen of dances, and the dance of queens,

do you understand? Since there is no longer any royalty, there is no

longer any minuet.”

And he began in a pompous manner a long dithyrambic eulogy which I could

not understand. I wanted to have the steps, the movements, the

positions, explained to me. He became confused, was amazed at his

inability to make me understand, became nervous and worried.

Then suddenly, turning to his old companion who had remained silent and

serious, he said:

“Elise, would you like—say—would you like, it would be very nice of you,

would you like to show this gentleman what it was?”

She turned eyes uneasily in all directions, then rose without saying a

word and took her position opposite him.

Then I witnessed an unheard-of thing.

They advanced and retreated with childlike grimaces, smiling, swinging

each other, bowing, skipping about like two automaton dolls moved by

some old mechanical contrivance, somewhat damaged, but made by a clever

workman according to the fashion of his time.

And I looked at them, my heart filled with extraordinary emotions, my

soul touched with an indescribable melancholy. I seemed to see before me

a pathetic and comical apparition, the out-of-date ghost of a former

century.

They suddenly stopped. They had finished all the figures of the dance.

For some seconds they stood opposite each other, smiling in an

astonishing manner. Then they fell on each other's necks sobbing.

I left for the provinces three days later. I never saw them again. When

I returned to Paris, two years later, the nursery had been destroyed.

What became of them, deprived of the dear garden of former days, with

its mazes, its odor of the past, and the graceful windings of its

hedges?

Are they dead? Are they wandering among modern streets like hopeless

exiles? Are they dancing—grotesque spectres—a fantastic minuet in the

moonlight, amid the cypresses of a cemetery, along the pathways bordered

by graves?

Their memory haunts me, obsesses me, torments me, remains with me like a

wound. Why? I do not know.

No doubt you think that very absurd?

THE SON

The two old friends were walking in the garden in bloom, where spring

was bringing everything to life.

One was a senator, the other a member of the French Academy, both

serious men, full of very logical but solemn arguments, men of note and

reputation.

They talked first of politics, exchanging opinions; not on ideas, but on

men, personalities in this regard taking the predominance over ability.

Then they recalled some memories. Then they walked along in silence,

enervated by the warmth of the air.

A large bed of wallflowers breathed out a delicate sweetness. A mass of

flowers of all species and color flung their fragrance to the breeze,

while a cytisus covered with yellow clusters scattered its fine pollen

abroad, a golden cloud, with an odor of honey that bore its balmy seed

across space, similar to the sachet-powders of perfumers.

The senator stopped, breathed in the cloud of floating pollen, looked at

the fertile shrub, yellow as the sun, whose seed was floating in the

air, and said:

“When one considers that these imperceptible fragrant atoms will create

existences at a hundred leagues from here, will send a thrill through

the fibres and sap of female trees and produce beings with roots,

growing from a germ, just as we do, mortal like ourselves, and who will

be replaced by other beings of the same order, like ourselves again!”

And, standing in front of the brilliant cytisus, whose live pollen was

shaken off by each breath of air, the senator added:

“Ah, old fellow, if you had to keep count of all your children you would

be mightily embarrassed. Here is one who generates freely, and then lets

them go without a pang and troubles himself no more about them.”

“We do the same, my friend,” said the academician.

“Yes, I do not deny it; we let them go sometimes,” resumed the senator,

“but we are aware that we do, and that constitutes our superiority.”

“No, that is not what I mean,” said the other, shaking his head. “You

see, my friend, that there is scarcely a man who has not some children

that he does not know, children—'father unknown'—whom he has generated

almost unconsciously, just as this tree reproduces.

“If we had to keep account of our amours, we should be just as

embarrassed as this cytisus which you apostrophized would be in counting

up his descendants, should we not?

“From eighteen to forty years, in fact, counting in every chance cursory

acquaintanceship, we may well say that we have been intimate with two or

three hundred women.

“Well, then, my friend, among this number can you be sure that you have

not had children by at least one of them, and that you have not in the

streets, or in the bagnio, some blackguard of a son who steals from and

murders decent people, i.e., ourselves; or else a daughter in some

disreputable place, or, if she has the good fortune to be deserted by

her mother, as cook in some family?

“Consider, also, that almost all those whom we call 'prostitutes' have

one or two children of whose paternal parentage they are ignorant,

generated by chance at the price of ten or twenty francs. In every

business there is profit and loss. These wildings constitute the 'loss'

in their profession. Who generated them? You—I—we all did, the men

called 'gentlemen'! They are the consequences of our jovial little

dinners, of our gay evenings, of those hours when our comfortable

physical being impels us to chance liaisons.

“Thieves, marauders, all these wretches, in fact, are our children. And

that is better for us than if we were their children, for those

scoundrels generate also!

“I have in my mind a very horrible story that I will relate to you. It

has caused me incessant remorse, and, further than that, a continual

doubt, a disquieting uncertainty, that, at times, torments me

frightfully.

“When I was twenty-five I undertook a walking tour through Brittany with

one of my friends, now a member of the cabinet.

“After walking steadily for fifteen or twenty days and visiting the

Cotes-du-Nord and part of Finistere we reached Douarnenez. From there we

went without halting to the wild promontory of Raz by the bay of Les

Trepaases, and passed the night in a village whose name ends in 'of.'

The next morning a strange lassitude kept my friend in bed; I say bed

from habit, for our couch consisted simply of two bundles of straw.

“It would never do to be ill in this place. So I made him get up, and we

reached Andierne about four or five o'clock in the evening.

“The following day he felt a little better, and we set out again. But on

the road he was seized with intolerable pain, and we could scarcely get

as far as Pont Labbe.

“Here, at least, there was an inn. My friend went to bed, and the

doctor, who had been sent for from Quimper, announced that he had a high

fever, without being able to determine its nature.

“Do you know Pont Labbe? No? Well, then, it is the most Breton of all

this Breton Brittany, which extends from the promontory of Raz to the

Morbihan, of this land which contains the essence of the Breton manners,

legends and customs. Even to-day this corner of the country has scarcely

changed. I say 'even to-day,' for I now go there every year, alas!

“An old chateau laves the walls of its towers in a great melancholy

pond, melancholy and frequented by flights of wild birds. It has an

outlet in a river on which boats can navigate as far as the town. In the

narrow streets with their old-time houses the men wear big hats,

embroidered waistcoats and four coats, one on top of the other; the

inside one, as large as your hand, barely covering the shoulder-blades,

and the outside one coming to just above the seat of the trousers.

“The girls, tall, handsome and fresh have their bosoms crushed in a

cloth bodice which makes an armor, compresses them, not allowing one

even to guess at their robust and tortured neck. They also wear a

strange headdress. On their temples two bands embroidered in colors

frame their face, inclosing the hair, which falls in a shower at the

back of their heads, and is then turned up and gathered on top of the

head under a singular cap, often woven with gold or silver thread.

“The servant at our inn was eighteen at most, with very blue eyes, a

pale blue with two tiny black pupils, short teeth close together, which

she showed continually when she laughed, and which seemed strong enough

to grind granite.

“She did not know a word of French, speaking only Breton, as did most of

her companions.

“As my friend did not improve much, and although he had no definite

malady, the doctor forbade him to continue his journey yet, ordering

complete rest. I spent my days with him, and the little maid would come

in incessantly, bringing either my dinner or some herb tea.

“I teased her a little, which seemed to amuse her, but we did not chat,

of course, as we could not understand each other.

“But one night, after I had stayed quite late with my friend and was

going back to my room, I passed the girl, who was going to her room. It

was just opposite my open door, and, without reflection, and more for

fun than anything else, I abruptly seized her round the waist, and

before she recovered from her astonishment I had thrown her down and

locked her in my room. She looked at me, amazed, excited, terrified, not

daring to cry out for fear of a scandal and of being probably driven

out, first by her employers and then, perhaps, by her father.

“I did it as a joke at first. She defended herself bravely, and at the

first chance she ran to the door, drew back the bolt and fled.

“I scarcely saw her for several days. She would not let me come near

her. But when my friend was cured and we were to get out on our travels

again I saw her coming into my room about midnight the night before our

departure, just after I had retired.

“She threw herself into my arms and embraced me passionately, giving me

all the assurances of tenderness and despair that a woman can give when

she does not know a word of our language.

“A week later I had forgotten this adventure, so common and frequent

when one is travelling, the inn servants being generally destined to

amuse travellers in this way.

“I was thirty before I thought of it again, or returned to Pont Labbe.

“But in 1876 I revisited it by chance during a trip into Brittany, which

I made in order to look up some data for a book and to become permeated

with the atmosphere of the different places.

“Nothing seemed changed. The chateau still laved its gray wall in the

pond outside the little town; the inn was the same, though it had been

repaired, renovated and looked more modern. As I entered it I was

received by two young Breton girls of eighteen, fresh and pretty, bound

up in their tight cloth bodices, with their silver caps and wide

embroidered bands on their ears.

“It was about six o'clock in the evening. I sat down to dinner, and as

the host was assiduous in waiting on me himself, fate, no doubt,

impelled me to say:

“'Did you know the former proprietors of this house? I spent about ten

days here thirty years ago. I am talking old times.'

“'Those were my parents, monsieur,' he replied.

“Then I told him why we had stayed over at that time, how my comrade had

been delayed by illness. He did not let me finish.

“'Oh, I recollect perfectly. I was about fifteen or sixteen. You slept

in the room at the end and your friend in the one I have taken for

myself, overlooking the street.'

“It was only then that the recollection of the little maid came vividly

to my mind. I asked: 'Do you remember a pretty little servant who was

then in your father's employ, and who had, if my memory does not deceive

me, pretty eyes and fresh-looking teeth?'

“'Yes, monsieur; she died in childbirth some time after.'

“And, pointing to the courtyard where a thin, lame man was stirring up

the manure, he added:

“'That is her son.'

“I began to laugh:

“'He is not handsome and does not look much like his mother. No doubt he

looks like his father.'

“'That is very possible,' replied the innkeeper; 'but we never knew

whose child it was. She died without telling any one, and no one here

knew of her having a beau. Every one was hugely astonished when they

heard she was enceinte, and no one would believe it.'

“A sort of unpleasant chill came over me, one of those painful surface

wounds that affect us like the shadow of an impending sorrow. And I

looked at the man in the yard. He had just drawn water for the horses

and was carrying two buckets, limping as he walked, with a painful

effort of his shorter leg. His clothes were ragged, he was hideously

dirty, with long yellow hair, so tangled that it looked like strands of

rope falling down at either side of his face.

“'He is not worth much,' continued the innkeeper; 'we have kept him for

charity's sake. Perhaps he would have turned out better if he had been

brought up like other folks. But what could one do, monsieur? No father,

no mother, no money! My parents took pity on him, but he was not their

child, you understand.'

“I said nothing.

“I slept in my old room, and all night long I thought of this frightful

stableman, saying to myself: 'Supposing it is my own son? Could I have

caused that girl's death and procreated this being? It was quite

possible!'

“I resolved to speak to this man and to find out the exact date of his

birth. A variation of two months would set my doubts at rest.

“I sent for him the next day. But he could not speak French. He looked

as if he could not understand anything, being absolutely ignorant of his

age, which I had inquired of him through one of the maids. He stood

before me like an idiot, twirling his hat in 'his knotted, disgusting

hands, laughing stupidly, with something of his mother's laugh in the

corners of his mouth and of his eyes.

“The landlord, appearing on the scene, went to look for the birth

certificate of this wretched being. He was born eight months and twenty-

six days after my stay at Pont Labbe, for I recollect perfectly that we

reached Lorient on the fifteenth of August. The certificate contained

this description: 'Father unknown.' The mother called herself Jeanne

Kerradec.

“Then my heart began to beat rapidly. I could not utter a word, for I

felt as if I were choking. I looked at this animal whose long yellow

hair reminded me of a straw heap, and the beggar, embarrassed by my

gaze, stopped laughing, turned his head aside, and wanted to get away.

“All day long I wandered beside the little river, giving way to painful

reflections. But what was the use of reflection? I could be sure of

nothing. For hours and hours I weighed all the pros and cons in favor of

or against the probability of my being the father, growing nervous over

inexplicable suppositions, only to return incessantly to the same

horrible uncertainty, then to the still more atrocious conviction that

this man was my son.

“I could eat no dinner, and went to my room.

“I lay awake for a long time, and when I finally fell asleep I was

haunted by horrible visions. I saw this laborer laughing in my face and

calling me 'papa.' Then he changed into a dog and bit the calves of my

legs, and no matter how fast I ran he still followed me, and instead of

barking, talked and reviled me. Then he appeared before my colleagues at

the Academy, who had assembled to decide whether I was really his

father; and one of them cried out: 'There can be no doubt about it! See

how he resembles him.' And, indeed, I could see that this monster looked

like me. And I awoke with this idea fixed in my mind and with an insane

desire to see the man again and assure myself whether or not we had

similar features.

“I joined him as he was going to mass (it was Sunday) and I gave him

five francs as I gazed at him anxiously. He began to laugh in an idiotic

manner, took the money, and then, embarrassed afresh at my gaze, he ran

off, after stammering an almost inarticulate word that, no doubt, meant

'thank you.'

“My day passed in the same distress of mind as on the previous night. I

sent for the landlord, and, with the greatest caution, skill and tact, I

told him that I was interested in this poor creature, so abandoned by

every one and deprived of everything, and I wished to do something for

him.

“But the man replied: 'Oh, do not think of it, monsieur; he is of no

account; you will only cause yourself annoyance. I employ him to clean

out the stable, and that is all he can do. I give him his board and let

him sleep with the horses. He needs nothing more. If you have an old

pair of trousers, you might give them to him, but they will be in rags

in a week.'

“I did not insist, intending to think it over.

“The poor wretch came home that evening frightfully drunk, came near

setting fire to the house, killed a horse by hitting it with a pickaxe,

and ended up by lying down to sleep in the mud in the midst of the

pouring rain, thanks to my donation.

“They begged me next day not to give him any more money. Brandy drove

him crazy, and as soon as he had two sous in his pocket he would spend

it in drink. The landlord added: 'Giving him money is like trying to

kill him.' The man had never, never in his life had more than a few

centimes, thrown to him by travellers, and he knew of no destination for

this metal but the wine shop.

“I spent several hours in my room with an open book before me which I

pretended to read, but in reality looking at this animal, my son! my

son! trying to discover if he looked anything like me. After careful

scrutiny I seemed to recognize a similarity in the lines of the forehead

and the root of the nose, and I was soon convinced that there was a

resemblance, concealed by the difference in garb and the man's hideous

head of hair.

“I could not stay here any longer without arousing suspicion, and I went

away, my heart crushed, leaving with the innkeeper some money to soften

the existence of his servant.

“For six years now I have lived with this idea in my mind, this horrible

uncertainty, this abominable suspicion. And each year an irresistible

force takes me back to Pont Labbe. Every year I condemn myself to the

torture of seeing this animal raking the manure, imagining that he

resembles me, and endeavoring, always vainly, to render him some

assistance. And each year I return more uncertain, more tormented, more

worried.

“I tried to have him taught, but he is a hopeless idiot. I tried to make

his life less hard. He is an irreclaimable drunkard, and spends in drink

all the money one gives him, and knows enough to sell his new clothes in

order to get brandy.

“I tried to awaken his master's sympathy, so that he should look after

him, offering to pay him for doing so. The innkeeper, finally surprised,

said, very wisely: 'All that you do for him, monsieur, will only help to

destroy him. He must be kept like a prisoner. As soon as he has any

spare time, or any comfort, he becomes wicked. If you wish to do good,

there is no lack of abandoned children, but select one who will

appreciate your attention.'

“What could I say?

“If I allowed the slightest suspicion of the doubts that tortured me to

escape, this idiot would assuredly become cunning, in order to blackmail

me, to compromise me and ruin me. He would call out 'papa,' as in my

dream.

“And I said to myself that I had killed the mother and lost this

atrophied creature, this larva of the stable, born and raised amid the

manure, this man who, if brought up like others, would have been like

others.

“And you cannot imagine what a strange, embarrassed and intolerable

feeling comes over me when he stands before me and I reflect that he

came from myself, that he belongs to me through the intimate bond that

links father and son, that, thanks to the terrible law of heredity, he

is my own self in a thousand ways, in his blood and his flesh, and that

he has even the same germs of disease, the same leaven of emotions.

“I have an incessant restless, distressing longing to see him, and the

sight of him causes me intense suffering, as I look down from my window

and watch him for hours removing and carting the horse manure, saying to

myself: 'That is my son.'

“And I sometimes feel an irresistible longing to embrace him. I have

never even touched his dirty hand.”

The academician was silent. His companion, a tactful man, murmured:

“Yes, indeed, we ought to take a closer interest in children who have no

father.”

A gust of wind passing through the tree shook its yellow clusters,

enveloping in a fragrant and delicate mist the two old men, who inhaled

in the fragrance with deep breaths.

The senator added: “It is good to be twenty-five and even to have

children like that.”

THAT PIG OF A MORIN

“Here, my friend,” I said to Labarbe, “you have just repeated those five

words, that pig of a Morin. Why on earth do I never hear Morin's name

mentioned without his being called a pig?”

Labarbe, who is a deputy, looked at me with his owl-like eyes and said:

“Do you mean to say that you do not know Morin's story and you come from

La Rochelle?” I was obliged to declare that I did not know Morin's

story, so Labarbe rubbed his hands and began his recital.

“You knew Morin, did you not, and you remember his large linen-draper's

shop on the Quai de la Rochelle?”

“Yes, perfectly.”

“Well, then. You must know that in 1862 or '63 Morin went to spend a

fortnight in Paris for pleasure; or for his pleasures, but under the

pretext of renewing his stock, and you also know what a fortnight in

Paris means to a country shopkeeper; it fires his blood. The theatre

every evening, women's dresses rustling up against you and continual

excitement; one goes almost mad with it. One sees nothing but dancers in

tights, actresses in very low dresses, round legs, fat shoulders, all

nearly within reach of one's hands, without daring, or being able, to

touch them, and one scarcely tastes food. When one leaves the city one's

heart is still all in a flutter and one's mind still exhilarated by a

sort of longing for kisses which tickles one's lips.

“Morin was in that condition when he took his ticket for La Rochelle by

the eight-forty night express. As he was walking up and down the

waiting-room at the station he stopped suddenly in front of a young lady

who was kissing an old one. She had her veil up, and Morin murmured with

delight: 'By Jove what a pretty woman!'

“When she had said 'good-by' to the old lady she went into the waiting-

room, and Morin followed her; then she went on the platform and Morin

still followed her; then she got into an empty carriage, and he again

followed her. There were very few travellers on the express. The engine

whistled and the train started. They were alone. Morin devoured her with

his eyes. She appeared to be about nineteen or twenty and was fair,

tall, with a bold look. She wrapped a railway rug round her and

stretched herself on the seat to sleep.

“Morin asked himself: 'I wonder who she is?' And a thousand conjectures,

a thousand projects went through his head. He said to himself: 'So many

adventures are told as happening on railway journeys that this may be

one that is going to present itself to me. Who knows? A piece of good

luck like that happens very suddenly, and perhaps I need only be a

little venturesome. Was it not Danton who said: “Audacity, more audacity

and always audacity”? If it was not Danton it was Mirabeau, but that

does not matter. But then I have no audacity, and that is the

difficulty. Oh! If one only knew, if one could only read people's minds!

I will bet that every day one passes by magnificent opportunities

without knowing it, though a gesture would be enough to let me know her

mind.'

“Then he imagined to himself combinations which conducted him to

triumph. He pictured some chivalrous deed or merely some slight service

which he rendered her, a lively, gallant conversation which ended in a

declaration.

“But he could find no opening, had no pretext, and he waited for some

fortunate circumstance, with his heart beating and his mind topsy-turvy.

The night passed and the pretty girl still slept, while Morin was

meditating his own fall. The day broke and soon the first ray of

sunlight appeared in the sky, a long, clear ray which shone on the face

of the sleeping girl and woke her. She sat up, looked at the country,

then at Morin and smiled. She smiled like a happy woman, with an

engaging and bright look, and Morin trembled. Certainly that smile was

intended for him; it was discreet invitation, the signal which he was

waiting for. That smile meant to say: 'How stupid, what a ninny, what a

dolt, what a donkey you are, to have sat there on your seat like a post

all night!

“'Just look at me, am I not charming? And you have sat like that for the

whole night, when you have been alone with a pretty woman, you great

simpleton!'

“She was still smiling as she looked at him; she even began to laugh;

and he lost his head trying to find something suitable to say, no matter

what. But he could think of nothing, nothing, and then, seized with a

coward's courage, he said to himself:

“'So much the worse, I will risk everything,' and suddenly, without the

slightest warning, he went toward her, his arms extended, his lips

protruding, and, seizing her in his arms, he kissed her.

“She sprang up immediately with a bound, crying out: 'Help! help!' and

screaming with terror; and then she opened the carriage door and waved

her arm out, mad with terror and trying to jump out, while Morin, who

was almost distracted and feeling sure that she would throw herself out,

held her by the skirt and stammered: 'Oh, madame! oh, madame!'

“The train slackened speed and then stopped. Two guards rushed up at the

young woman's frantic signals. She threw herself into their arms,

stammering: 'That man wanted—wanted—to—to—' And then she fainted.

“They were at Mauze station, and the gendarme on duty arrested Morin.

When the victim of his indiscreet admiration had regained her

consciousness, she made her charge against him, and the police drew it

up. The poor linen draper did not reach home till night, with a

prosecution hanging over him for an outrage to morals in a public

place.” II

“At that time I was editor of the Fanal des Charentes, and I used to

meet Morin every day at the Cafe du Commerce, and the day after his

adventure. he came to see me, as he did not know what to do. I did not

hide my opinion from him, but said to him: 'You are no better than a

pig. No decent man behaves like that.'

“He cried. His wife had given him a beating, and he foresaw his trade

ruined, his name dragged through the mire and dishonored, his friends

scandalized and taking no notice of him. In the end he excited my pity,

and I sent for my colleague, Rivet, a jocular but very sensible little

man, to give us his advice.

“He advised me to see the public prosecutor, who was a friend of mine,

and so I sent Morin home and went to call on the magistrate. He told me

that the woman who had been insulted was a young lady, Mademoiselle

Henriette Bonnel, who had just received her certificate as governess in

Paris and spent her holidays with her uncle and aunt, who were very

respectable tradespeople in Mauze. What made Morin's case all the more

serious was that the uncle had lodged a complaint, but the public

official had consented to let the matter drop if this complaint were

withdrawn, so we must try and get him to do this.

“I went back to Morin's and found him in bed, ill with excitement and

distress. His wife, a tall raw-boned woman with a beard, was abusing him

continually, and she showed me into the room, shouting at me: 'So you

have come to see that pig of a Morin. Well, there he is, the darling!'

And she planted herself in front of the bed, with her hands on her hips.

I told him how matters stood, and he begged me to go and see the girl's

uncle and aunt. It was a delicate mission, but I undertook it, and the

poor devil never ceased repeating: 'I assure you I did not even kiss

her; no, not even that. I will take my oath to it!'

“I replied: 'It is all the same; you are nothing but a pig.' And I took

a thousand francs which he gave me to employ as I thought best, but as I

did not care to venture to her uncle's house alone, I begged Rivet to go

with me, which he agreed to do on condition that we went immediately,

for he had some urgent business at La Rochelle that afternoon. So two

hours later we rang at the door of a pretty country house. An attractive

girl came and opened the door to us assuredly the young lady in

question, and I said to Rivet in a low voice: 'Confound it! I begin to

understand Morin!'

“The uncle, Monsieur Tonnelet, subscribed to the Fanal, and was a

fervent political coreligionist of ours. He received us with open arms

and congratulated us and wished us joy; he was delighted at having the

two editors in his house, and Rivet whispered to me: 'I think we shall

be able to arrange the matter of that pig of a Morin for him.'

“The niece had left the room and I introduced the delicate subject. I

waved the spectre of scandal before his eyes; I accentuated the

inevitable depreciation which the young lady would suffer if such an

affair became known, for nobody would believe in a simple kiss, and the

good man seemed undecided, but he could not make up his mind about

anything without his wife, who would not be in until late that evening.

But suddenly he uttered an exclamation of triumph: 'Look here, I have an

excellent idea; I will keep you here to dine and sleep, and when my wife

comes home I hope we shall be able to arrange matters:

“Rivet resisted at first, but the wish to extricate that pig of a Morin

decided him, and we accepted the invitation, and the uncle got up

radiant, called his niece and proposed that we should take a stroll in

his grounds, saying: 'We will leave serious matters until the morning.'

Rivet and he began to talk politics, while I soon found myself lagging a

little behind with 'the girl who was really charming—charming—and with

the greatest precaution I began to speak to her about her adventure and

try to make her my ally. She did not, however, appear the least

confused, and listened to me like a person who was enjoying the whole

thing very much.

“I said to her: 'Just think, mademoiselle, how unpleasant it will be for

you. You will have to appear in court, to encounter malicious looks, to

speak before everybody and to recount that unfortunate occurrence in the

railway carriage in public. Do you not think, between ourselves, that it

would have been much better for you to have put that dirty scoundrel

back in his place without calling for assistance, and merely to change

your carriage?' She began to laugh and replied: 'What you say is quite

true, but what could I do? I was frightened, and when one is frightened

one does not stop to reason with one's self. As soon as I realized the

situation I was very sorry, that I had called out, but then it was too

late. You must also remember that the idiot threw himself upon me like a

madman, without saying a word and looking like a lunatic. I did not even

know what he wanted of me.'

“She looked me full in the face without being nervous or intimidated and

I said to myself: 'She is a queer sort of girl, that: I can quite see

how that pig Morin came to make a mistake,' and I went on jokingly:

'Come, mademoiselle, confess that he was excusable, for, after all, a

man cannot find himself opposite such a pretty girl as you are without

feeling a natural desire to kiss her.'

“She laughed more than ever and showed her teeth and said: 'Between the

desire and the act, monsieur, there is room for respect.' It was an odd

expression to use, although it was not very clear, and I asked abruptly:

'Well, now, suppose I were to kiss you, what would you do?' She stopped

to look at me from head to foot and then said calmly: 'Oh, you? That is

quite another matter.'

“I knew perfectly well, by Jove, that it was not the same thing at all,

as everybody in the neighborhood called me 'Handsome Labarbe'—I was

thirty years old in those days—but I asked her: 'And why, pray?' She

shrugged her shoulders and replied: 'Well! because you are not so stupid

as he is.' And then she added, looking at me slyly: 'Nor so ugly,

either: And before she could make a movement to avoid me I had implanted

a hearty kiss on her cheek. She sprang aside, but it was too late, and

then she said: 'Well, you are not very bashful, either! But don't do

that sort of thing again.'

“I put on a humble look and said in a low voice: 'Oh, mademoiselle! as

for me, if I long for one thing more than another it is to be summoned

before a magistrate for the same reason as Morin.'

“'Why?' she asked. And, looking steadily at her, I replied: 'Because you

are one of the most beautiful creatures living; because it would be an

honor and a glory for me to have wished to offer you violence, and

because people would have said, after seeing you: “Well, Labarbe has

richly deserved what he has got, but he is a lucky fellow, all the

same.”'

“She began to laugh heartily again and said: 'How funny you are!' And

she had not finished the word 'funny' before I had her in my arms and

was kissing her ardently wherever I could find a place, on her forehead,

on her eyes, on her lips occasionally, on her cheeks, all over her head,

some part of which she was obliged to leave exposed, in spite of

herself, to defend the others; but at last she managed to release

herself, blushing and angry. 'You are very unmannerly, monsieur,' she

said, 'and I am sorry I listened to you.'

“I took her hand in some confusion and stammered out: 'I beg your

pardon. I beg your pardon, mademoiselle. I have offended you; I have

acted like a brute! Do not be angry with me for what I have done. If you

knew—' I vainly sought for some excuse, and in a few moments she said:

'There is nothing for me to know, monsieur.' But I had found something

to say, and I cried: 'Mademoiselle, I love you!'

“She was really surprised and raised her eyes to look at me, and I went

on: 'Yes, mademoiselle, and pray listen to me. I do not know Morin, and

I do not care anything about him. It does not matter to me the least if

he is committed for trial and locked up meanwhile. I saw you here last

year, and I was so taken with you that the thought of you has never left

me since, and it does not matter to me whether you believe me or not. I

thought you adorable, and the remembrance of you took such a hold on me

that I longed to see you again, and so I made use of that fool Morin as

a pretext, and here I am. Circumstances have made me exceed the due

limits of respect, and I can only beg you to pardon me.'

“She looked at me to see if I was in earnest and was ready to smile

again. Then she murmured: 'You humbug!' But I raised my hand and said in

a sincere voice (and I really believe that I was sincere): 'I swear to

you that I am speaking the truth,' and she replied quite simply: 'Don't

talk nonsense!'

“We were alone, quite alone, as Rivet and her uncle had disappeared down

a sidewalk, and I made her a real declaration of love, while I squeezed

and kissed her hands, and she listened to it as to something new and

agreeable, without exactly knowing how much of it she was to believe,

while in the end I felt agitated, and at last really myself believed

what I said. I was pale, anxious and trembling, and I gently put my arm

round her waist and spoke to her softly, whispering into the little

curls over her ears. She seemed in a trance, so absorbed in thought was

she.

“Then her hand touched mine, and she pressed it, and I gently squeezed

her waist with a trembling, and gradually firmer, grasp. She did not

move now, and I touched her cheek with my lips, and suddenly without

seeking them my lips met hers. It was a long, long kiss, and it would

have lasted longer still if I had not heard a hm! hm! just behind me, at

which she made her escape through the bushes, and turning round I saw

Rivet coming toward me, and, standing in the middle of the path, he said

without even smiling: 'So that is the way you settle the affair of that

pig of a Morin.' And I replied conceitedly: 'One does what one can, my

dear fellow. But what about the uncle? How have you got on with him? I

will answer for the niece.' 'I have not been so fortunate with him,' he

replied.

“Whereupon I took his arm and we went indoors.” III

“Dinner made me lose my head altogether. I sat beside her, and my hand

continually met hers under the tablecloth, my foot touched hers and our

glances met.

“After dinner we took a walk by moonlight, and I whispered all the

tender things I could think of to her. I held her close to me, kissed

her every moment, while her uncle and Rivet were arguing as they walked

in front of us. They went in, and soon a messenger brought a telegram

from her aunt, saying that she would not return until the next morning

at seven o'clock by the first train.

“'Very well, Henriette,' her uncle said, 'go and show the gentlemen

their rooms.' She showed Rivet his first, and he whispered to me: 'There

was no danger of her taking us into yours first.' Then she took me to my

room, and as soon as she was alone with me I took her in my arms again

and tried to arouse her emotion, but when she saw the danger she escaped

out of the room, and I retired very much put out and excited and feeling

rather foolish, for I knew that I should not sleep much, and I was

wondering how I could have committed such a mistake, when there was a

gentle knock at my door, and on my asking who was there a low voice

replied: 'I'

“I dressed myself quickly and opened the door, and she came in. 'I

forgot to ask you what you take in the morning,' she said; 'chocolate,

tea or coffee?' I put my arms round her impetuously and said, devouring

her with kisses: 'I will take—I will take—'

“But she freed herself from my arms, blew out my candle and disappeared

and left me alone in the dark, furious, trying to find some matches, and

not able to do so. At last I got some and I went into the passage,

feeling half mad, with my candlestick in my hand.

“What was I about to do? I did not stop to reason, I only wanted to find

her, and I would. I went a few steps without reflecting, but then I

suddenly thought: 'Suppose I should walk into the uncle's room what

should I say?' And I stood still, with my head a void and my heart

beating. But in a few moments I thought of an answer: 'Of course, I

shall say that I was looking for Rivet's room to speak to him about an

important matter,' and I began to inspect all the doors, trying to find

hers, and at last I took hold of a handle at a venture, turned it and

went in. There was Henriette, sitting on her bed and looking at me in

tears. So I gently turned the key, and going up to her on tiptoe I said:

'I forgot to ask you for something to read, mademoiselle.'

“I was stealthily returning to my room when a rough hand seized me and a

voice—it was Rivet's—whispered in my ear: 'So you have not yet quite

settled that affair of Morin's?'

“At seven o'clock the next morning Henriette herself brought me a cup of

chocolate. I never have drunk anything like it, soft, velvety, perfumed,

delicious. I could hardly take away my lips from the cup, and she had

hardly left the room when Rivet came in. He seemed nervous and

irritable, like a man who had not slept, and he said to me crossly:

“'If you go on like this you will end by spoiling the affair of that pig

of a Morin!'

“At eight o'clock the aunt arrived. Our discussion was very short, for

they withdrew their complaint, and I left five hundred francs for the

poor of the town. They wanted to keep us for the day, and they arranged

an excursion to go and see some ruins. Henriette made signs to me to

stay, behind her parents' back, and I accepted, but Rivet was determined

to go, and though I took him aside and begged and prayed him to do this

for me, he appeared quite exasperated and kept saying to me: 'I have had

enough of that pig of a Morin's affair, do you hear?'

“Of course I was obliged to leave also, and it was one of the hardest

moments of my life. I could have gone on arranging that business as long

as I lived, and when we were in the railway carriage, after shaking

hands with her in silence, I said to Rivet: 'You are a mere brute!' And

he replied: 'My dear fellow, you were beginning to annoy me

confoundedly.'

“On getting to the Fanal office, I saw a crowd waiting for us, and as

soon as they saw us they all exclaimed: 'Well, have you settled the

affair of that pig of a Morin?' All La Rochelle was excited about it,

and Rivet, who had got over his ill-humor on the journey, had great

difficulty in keeping himself from laughing as he said: 'Yes, we have

managed it, thanks to Labarbe: And we went to Morin's.

“He was sitting in an easy-chair with mustard plasters on his legs and

cold bandages on his head, nearly dead with misery. He was coughing with

the short cough of a dying man, without any one knowing how he had

caught it, and his wife looked at him like a tigress ready to eat him,

and as soon as he saw us he trembled so violently as to make his hands

and knees shake, so I said to him immediately: 'It is all settled, you

dirty scamp, but don't do such a thing again.'

“He got up, choking, took my hands and kissed them as if they had

belonged to a prince, cried, nearly fainted, embraced Rivet and even

kissed Madame Morin, who gave him such a push as to send him staggering

back into his chair; but he never got over the blow; his mind had been

too much upset. In all the country round, moreover, he was called

nothing but 'that pig of a Morin,' and that epithet went through him

like a sword-thrust every time he heard it. When a street boy called

after him 'Pig!' he turned his head instinctively. His friends also

overwhelmed him with horrible jokes and used to ask him, whenever they

were eating ham, 'Is it a bit of yourself?' He died two years later.

“As for myself, when I was a candidate for the Chamber of Deputies in

1875, I called on the new notary at Fousserre, Monsieur Belloncle, to

solicit his vote, and a tall, handsome and evidently wealthy lady

received me. 'You do not know me again?' she said. And I stammered out:

'Why—no—madame.' 'Henriette Bonnel.' 'Ah!' And I felt myself turning

pale, while she seemed perfectly at her ease and looked at me with a

smile.

“As soon as she had left me alone with her husband he took both my

hands, and, squeezing them as if he meant to crush them, he said: 'I

have been intending to go and see you for a long time, my dear sir, for

my wife has very often talked to me about you. I know—yes, I know under

what painful circumstances you made her acquaintance, and I know also

how perfectly you behaved, how full of delicacy, tact and devotion you

showed yourself in the affair—' He hesitated and then said in a lower

tone, as if he had been saying something low and coarse, 'in the affair

of that pig of a Morin.'”

SAINT ANTHONY

They called him Saint Anthony, because his name was Anthony, and also,

perhaps, because he was a good fellow, jovial, a lover of practical

jokes, a tremendous eater and a heavy drinker and a gay fellow, although

he was sixty years old.

He was a big peasant of the district of Caux, with a red face, large

chest and stomach, and perched on two legs that seemed too slight for

the bulk of his body.

He was a widower and lived alone with his two men servants and a maid on

his farm, which he conducted with shrewd economy. He was careful of his

own interests, understood business and the raising of cattle, and

farming. His two sons and his three daughters, who had married well,

were living in the neighborhood and came to dine with their father once

a month. His vigor of body was famous in all the countryside. “He is as

strong as Saint Anthony,” had become a kind of proverb.

At the time of the Prussian invasion Saint Anthony, at the wine shop,

promised to eat an army, for he was a braggart, like a true Norman, a

bit of a coward and a blusterer. He banged his fist on the wooden table,

making the cups and the brandy glasses dance, and cried with the assumed

wrath of a good fellow, with a flushed face and a sly look in his eye:

“I shall have to eat some of them, nom de Dieu!” He reckoned that the

Prussians would not come as far as Tanneville, but when he heard they

were at Rautot he never went out of the house, and constantly watched

the road from the little window of his kitchen, expecting at any moment

to see the bayonets go by.

One morning as he was eating his luncheon with the servants the door

opened and the mayor of the commune, Maitre Chicot, appeared, followed

by a soldier wearing a black copper-pointed helmet. Saint Anthony

bounded to his feet and his servants all looked at him, expecting to see

him slash the Prussian. But he merely shook hands with the mayor, who

said:

“Here is one for you, Saint Anthony. They came last night. Don't do

anything foolish, above all things, for they talked of shooting and

burning everything if there is the slightest unpleasantness, I have

given you warning. Give him something to eat; he looks like a good

fellow. Good-day. I am going to call on the rest. There are enough for

all.” And he went out.

Father Anthony, who had turned pale, looked at the Prussian. He was a

big, young fellow with plump, white skin, blue eyes, fair hair, unshaven

to his cheek bones, who looked stupid, timid and good. The shrewd Norman

read him at once, and, reassured, he made him a sign to sit down. Then

he said: “Will you take some soup?”

The stranger did not understand. Anthony then became bolder, and pushing

a plateful of soup right under his nose, he said: “Here, swallow that,

big pig!”

The soldier answered “Ya,” and began to eat greedily, while the farmer,

triumphant, feeling he had regained his reputation, winked his eye at

the servants, who were making strange grimaces, what with their terror

and their desire to laugh.

When the Prussian had devoured his soup, Saint Anthony gave him another

plateful, which disappeared in like manner; but he flinched at the third

which the farmer tried to insist on his eating, saying: “Come, put that

into your stomach; 'twill fatten you or it is your own fault, eh, pig!”

The soldier, understanding only that they wanted to make him eat all his

soup, laughed in a contented manner, making a sign to show that he could

not hold any more.

Then Saint Anthony, become quite familiar, tapped him on the stomach,

saying: “My, there is plenty in my pig's belly!” But suddenly he began

to writhe with laughter, unable to speak. An idea had struck him which

made him choke with mirth. “That's it, that's it, Saint Anthony and his

pig. There's my pig!” And the three servants burst out laughing in their

turn.

The old fellow was so pleased that he had the brandy brought in, good

stuff, 'fil en dix', and treated every one. They clinked glasses with

the Prussian, who clacked his tongue by way of flattery to show that he

enjoyed it. And Saint Anthony exclaimed in his face: “Eh, is not that

superfine? You don't get anything like that in your home, pig!”

From that time Father Anthony never went out without his Prussian. He

had got what he wanted. This was his vengeance, the vengeance of an old

rogue. And the whole countryside, which was in terror, laughed to split

its sides at Saint Anthony's joke. Truly, there was no one like him when

it came to humor. No one but he would have thought of a thing like that.

He was a born joker!

He went to see his neighbors every day, arm in arm with his German, whom

he introduced in a jovial manner, tapping him on the shoulder: “See,

here is my pig; look and see if he is not growing fat, the animal!”

And the peasants would beam with smiles. “He is so comical, that

reckless fellow, Antoine!”

“I will sell him to you, Cesaire, for three pistoles” (thirty francs).

“I will take him, Antoine, and I invite you to eat some black pudding.”

“What I want is his feet.”

“Feel his belly; you will see that it is all fat.”

And they all winked at each other, but dared not laugh too loud, for

fear the Prussian might finally suspect they were laughing at him.

Anthony, alone growing bolder every day, pinched his thighs, exclaiming,

“Nothing but fat”; tapped him on the back, shouting, “That is all

bacon”; lifted him up in his arms as an old Colossus that could have

lifted an anvil, declaring, “He weighs six hundred and no waste.”

He had got into the habit of making people offer his “pig” something to

eat wherever they went together. This was the chief pleasure, the great

diversion every day. “Give him whatever you please, he will swallow

everything.” And they offered the man bread and butter, potatoes, cold

meat, chitterlings, which caused the remark, “Some of your own, and

choice ones.”

The soldier, stupid and gentle, ate from politeness, charmed at these

attentions, making himself ill rather than refuse, and he was actually

growing fat and his uniform becoming tight for him. This delighted Saint

Anthony, who said: “You know, my pig, that we shall have to have another

cage made for you.”

They had, however, become the best friends in the world, and when the

old fellow went to attend to his business in the neighborhood the

Prussian accompanied him for the simple pleasure of being with him.

The weather was severe; it was freezing hard. The terrible winter of

1870 seemed to bring all the scourges on France at one time.

Father Antoine, who made provision beforehand, and took advantage of

every opportunity, foreseeing that manure would be scarce for the spring

farming, bought from a neighbor who happened to be in need of money all

that he had, and it was agreed that he should go every evening with his

cart to get a load.

So every day at twilight he set out for the farm of Haules, half a

league distant, always accompanied by his “pig.” And each time it was a

festival, feeding the animal. All the neighbors ran over there as they

would go to high mass on Sunday.

But the soldier began to suspect something, be mistrustful, and when

they laughed too loud he would roll his eyes uneasily, and sometimes

they lighted up with anger.

One evening when he had eaten his fill he refused to swallow another

morsel, and attempted to rise to leave the table. But Saint Anthony

stopped him by a turn of the wrist and, placing his two powerful hands

on his shoulders, he sat him down again so roughly that the chair

smashed under him.

A wild burst of laughter broke forth, and Anthony, beaming, picked up

his pig, acted as though he were dressing his wounds, and exclaimed:

“Since you will not eat, you shall drink, nom de Dieu!” And they went to

the wine shop to get some brandy.

The soldier rolled his eyes, which had a wicked expression, but he

drank, nevertheless; he drank as long as they wanted him, and Saint

Anthony held his head to the great delight of his companions.

The Norman, red as a tomato, his eyes ablaze, filled up the glasses and

clinked, saying: “Here's to you!”. And the Prussian, without speaking a

word, poured down one after another glassfuls of cognac.

It was a contest, a battle, a revenge! Who would drink the most, nom

d'un nom! They could neither of them stand any more when the liter was

emptied. But neither was conquered. They were tied, that was all. They

would have to begin again the next day.

They went out staggering and started for home, walking beside the dung

cart which was drawn along slowly by two horses.

Snow began to fall and the moonless night was sadly lighted by this dead

whiteness on the plain. The men began to feel the cold, and this

aggravated their intoxication. Saint Anthony, annoyed at not being the

victor, amused himself by shoving his companion so as to make him fall

over into the ditch. The other would dodge backwards, and each time he

did he uttered some German expression in an angry tone, which made the

peasant roar with laughter. Finally the Prussian lost his temper, and

just as Anthony was rolling towards him he responded with such a

terrific blow with his fist that the Colossus staggered.

Then, excited by the brandy, the old man seized the pugilist round the

waist, shook him for a few moments as he would have done with a little

child, and pitched him at random to the other side of the road. Then,

satisfied with this piece of work, he crossed his arms and began to

laugh afresh.

But the soldier picked himself up in a hurry, his head bare, his helmet

having rolled off, and drawing his sword he rushed over to Father

Anthony.

When he saw him coming the peasant seized his whip by the top of the

handle, his big holly wood whip, straight, strong and supple as the

sinew of an ox.

The Prussian approached, his head down, making a lunge with his sword,

sure of killing his adversary. But the old fellow, squarely hitting the

blade, the point of which would have pierced his stomach, turned it

aside, and with the butt end of the whip struck the soldier a sharp blow

on the temple and he fell to the ground.

Then he, gazed aghast, stupefied with amazement, at the body, twitching

convulsively at first and then lying prone and motionless. He bent over

it, turned it on its back, and gazed at it for some time. The man's eyes

were closed, and blood trickled from a wound at the side of his

forehead. Although it was dark, Father Anthony could distinguish the

bloodstain on the white snow.

He remained there, at his wit's end, while his cart continued slowly on

its way.

What was he to do? He would be shot! They would burn his farm, ruin his

district! What should he do? What should he do? How could he hide the

body, conceal the fact of his death, deceive the Prussians? He heard

voices in the distance, amid the utter stillness of the snow. All at

once he roused himself, and picking up the helmet he placed it on his

victim's head. Then, seizing him round the body, he lifted him up in his

arms, and thus running with him, he overtook his team, and threw the

body on top of the manure. Once in his own house he would think up some

plan.

He walked slowly, racking his brain, but without result. He saw, he

felt, that he was lost. He entered his courtyard. A light was shining in

one of the attic windows; his maid was not asleep. He hastily backed his

wagon to the edge of the manure hollow. He thought that by overturning

the manure the body lying on top of it would fall into the ditch and be

buried beneath it, and he dumped the cart.

As he had foreseen, the man was buried beneath the manure. Anthony

evened it down with his fork, which he stuck in the ground beside it. He

called his stableman, told him to put up the horses, and went to his

room.

He went to bed, still thinking of what he had best do, but no ideas came

to him. His apprehension increased in the quiet of his room. They would

shoot him! He was bathed in perspiration from fear, his teeth chattered,

he rose shivering, not being able to stay in bed.

He went downstairs to the kitchen, took the bottle of brandy from the

sideboard and carried it upstairs. He drank two large glasses, one after

another, adding a fresh intoxication to the late one, without quieting

his mental anguish. He had done a pretty stroke of work, nom de Dieu,

idiot!

He paced up and down, trying to think of some stratagem, some

explanations, some cunning trick, and from time to time he rinsed his

mouth with a swallow of “fil en dix” to give him courage.

But no ideas came to him, not one.

Towards midnight his watch dog, a kind of cross wolf called “Devorant,”

began to howl frantically. Father Anthony shuddered to the marrow of his

bones, and each time the beast began his long and lugubrious wail the

old man's skin turned to goose flesh.

He had sunk into a chair, his legs weak, stupefied, done up, waiting

anxiously for “Devorant” to set up another howl, and starting

convulsively from nervousness caused by terror.

The clock downstairs struck five. The dog was still howling. The peasant

was almost insane. He rose to go and let the dog loose, so that he

should not hear him. He went downstairs, opened the hall door, and

stepped out into the darkness. The snow was still falling. The earth was

all white, the farm buildings standing out like black patches. He

approached the kennel. The dog was dragging at his chain. He unfastened

it. “Devorant” gave a bound, then stopped short, his hair bristling, his

legs rigid, his muzzle in the air, his nose pointed towards the manure

heap.

Saint Anthony, trembling from head to foot, faltered:

“What's the matter with you, you dirty hound?” and he walked a few steps

forward, gazing at the indistinct outlines, the sombre shadow of the

courtyard.

Then he saw a form, the form of a man sitting on the manure heap!

He gazed at it, paralyzed by fear, and breathing hard. But all at once

he saw, close by, the handle of the manure fork which was sticking in

the ground. He snatched it up and in one of those transports of fear

that will make the greatest coward brave he rushed forward to see what

it was.

It was he, his Prussian, come to life, covered with filth from his bed

of manure which had kept him warm. He had sat down mechanically, and

remained there in the snow which sprinkled down, all covered with dirt

and blood as he was, and still stupid from drinking, dazed by the blow

and exhausted from his wound.

He perceived Anthony, and too sodden to understand anything, he made an

attempt to rise. But the moment the old man recognized him, he foamed

with rage like a wild animal.

“Ah, pig! pig!” he sputtered. “You are not dead! You are going to

denounce me now—wait—wait!”

And rushing on the German with all the strength of leis arms he flung

the raised fork like a lance and buried the four prongs full length in

his breast.

The soldier fell over on his back, uttering a long death moan, while the

old peasant, drawing the fork out of his breast, plunged it over and

over again into his abdomen, his stomach, his throat, like a madman,

piercing the body from head to foot, as it still quivered, and the blood

gushed out in streams.

Finally he stopped, exhausted by his arduous work, swallowing great

mouthfuls of air, calmed down at the completion of the murder.

As the cocks were beginning to crow in the poultry yard and it was near

daybreak, he set to work to bury the man.

He dug a hole in the manure till he reached the earth, dug down further,

working wildly, in a frenzy of strength with frantic motions of his arms

and body.

When the pit was deep enough he rolled the corpse into it with the fork,

covered it with earth, which he stamped down for some time, and then put

back the manure, and he smiled as he saw the thick snow finishing his

work and covering up its traces with a white sheet.

He then stuck the fork in the manure and went into the house. His

bottle, still half full of brandy stood on the table. He emptied it at a

draught, threw himself on his bed and slept heavily.

He woke up sober, his mind calm and clear, capable of judgment and

thought.

At the end of an hour he was going about the country making inquiries

everywhere for his soldier. He went to see the Prussian officer to find

out why they had taken away his man.

As everyone knew what good friends they were, no one suspected him. He

even directed the research, declaring that the Prussian went to see the

girls every evening.

An old retired gendarme who had an inn in the next village, and a pretty

daughter, was arrested and shot.

LASTING LOVE

It was the end of the dinner that opened the shooting season. The

Marquis de Bertrans with his guests sat around a brightly lighted table,

covered with fruit and flowers. The conversation drifted to love.

Immediately there arose an animated discussion, the same eternal

discussion as to whether it were possible to love more than once.

Examples were given of persons who had loved once; these were offset by

those who had loved violently many times. The men agreed that passion,

like sickness, may attack the same person several times, unless it

strikes to kill. This conclusion seemed quite incontestable. The women,

however, who based their opinion on poetry rather than on practical

observation, maintained that love, the great passion, may come only once

to mortals. It resembles lightning, they said, this love. A heart once

touched by it becomes forever such a waste, so ruined, so consumed, that

no other strong sentiment can take root there, not even a dream. The

marquis, who had indulged in many love affairs, disputed this belief.

“I tell you it is possible to love several times with all one's heart

and soul. You quote examples of persons who have killed themselves for

love, to prove the impossibility of a second passion. I wager that if

they had not foolishly committed suicide, and so destroyed the

possibility of a second experience, they would have found a new love,

and still another, and so on till death. It is with love as with drink.

He who has once indulged is forever a slave. It is a thing of

temperament.”

They chose the old doctor as umpire. He thought it was as the marquis

had said, a thing of temperament.

“As for me,” he said, “I once knew of a love which lasted fifty-five

years without one day's respite, and which ended only with death.” The

wife of the marquis clasped her hands.

“That is beautiful! Ah, what a dream to be loved in such a way! What

bliss to live for fifty-five years enveloped in an intense, unwavering

affection! How this happy being must have blessed his life to be so

adored!”

The doctor smiled.

“You are not mistaken, madame, on this point the loved one was a man.

You even know him; it is Monsieur Chouquet, the chemist. As to the

woman, you also know her, the old chair-mender, who came every year to

the chateau.” The enthusiasm of the women fell. Some expressed their

contempt with “Pouah!” for the loves of common people did not interest

them. The doctor continued: “Three months ago I was called to the

deathbed of the old chair-mender. The priest had preceded me. She wished

to make us the executors of her will. In order that we might understand

her conduct, she told us the story of her life. It is most singular and

touching: Her father and mother were both chair-menders. She had never

lived in a house. As a little child she wandered about with them, dirty,

unkempt, hungry. They visited many towns, leaving their horse, wagon and

dog just outside the limits, where the child played in the grass alone

until her parents had repaired all the broken chairs in the place. They

seldom spoke, except to cry, 'Chairs! Chairs! Chair-mender!'

“When the little one strayed too far away, she would be called back by

the harsh, angry voice of her father. She never heard a word of

affection. When she grew older, she fetched and carried the broken

chairs. Then it was she made friends with the children in the street,

but their parents always called them away and scolded them for speaking

to the barefooted child. Often the boys threw stones at her. Once a kind

woman gave her a few pennies. She saved them most carefully.

“One day—she was then eleven years old—as she was walking through a

country town she met, behind the cemetery, little Chouquet, weeping

bitterly, because one of his playmates had stolen two precious liards

(mills). The tears of the small bourgeois, one of those much-envied

mortals, who, she imagined, never knew trouble, completely upset her.

She approached him and, as soon as she learned the cause of his grief,

she put into his hands all her savings. He took them without hesitation

and dried his eyes. Wild with joy, she kissed him. He was busy counting

his money, and did not object. Seeing that she was not repulsed, she

threw her arms round him and gave him a hug—then she ran away.

“What was going on in her poor little head? Was it because she had

sacrificed all her fortune that she became madly fond of this youngster,

or was it because she had given him the first tender kiss? The mystery

is alike for children and for those of riper years. For months she

dreamed of that corner near the cemetery and of the little chap. She

stole a sou here and, there from her parents on the chair money or

groceries she was sent to buy. When she returned to the spot near the

cemetery she had two francs in her pocket, but he was not there. Passing

his father's drug store, she caught sight of him behind the counter. He

was sitting between a large red globe and a blue one. She only loved him

the more, quite carried away at the sight of the brilliant-colored

globes. She cherished the recollection of it forever in her heart. The

following year she met him near the school playing marbles. She rushed

up to him, threw her arms round him, and kissed him so passionately that

he screamed, in fear. To quiet him, she gave him all her money. Three

francs and twenty centimes! A real gold mine, at which he gazed with

staring eyes.