TOINE ......................................................................................................................................................1

MADAME HUSSON'S "ROSIER" .........................................................................................................7

THE ADOPTED SON...........................................................................................................................18

COWARD ..............................................................................................................................................22

OLD MONGILET.................................................................................................................................28

MOONLIGHT.......................................................................................................................................32

THE FIRST SNOWFALL.....................................................................................................................34

SUNDAYS OF A BOURGEOIS ...........................................................................................................40

A RECOLLECTION.............................................................................................................................60

OUR LETTERS .....................................................................................................................................65

THE LOVE OF LONG AGO................................................................................................................68

FRIEND JOSEPH ..................................................................................................................................70

THE EFFEMINATES ............................................................................................................................74

OLD AMABLE.....................................................................................................................................76

He was known for thirty miles round was father Toinefat Toine, Toine myextra, Antoine Macheble,

It was he who had made famous this hamlet buried in a niche in the valley that led down to the sea, a poor

little peasants' hamlet consisting of ten Norman cottages surrounded by ditches and trees.

The houses were hidden behind a curve which had given the place the name of Tournevent. It seemed to have

sought shelter in this ravine overgrown with grass and rushes, from the keen, salt sea windthe ocean wind

that devours and burns like fire, that drys up and withers like the sharpest frost of winter, just as birds seek

But the whole hamlet seemed to be the property of Antoine Macheble, nicknamed BurntBrandy, who was

called also Toine, or ToineMyExtra Special, the latter in consequence of a phrase current in his mouth:

For the last twenty years he had served the whole countryside with his ExtraSpecial and his

"BurntBrandy," for whenever he was asked: "What shall I drink, Toine?" he invariably answered: "A

burntbrandy, my son inlaw; that warms the inside and clears the headthere's nothing better for your

He called everyone his soninlaw, though he had no daughter, either married or to be married.

Well known indeed was Toine BurntBrandy, the stoutest man in all Normandy. His little house seemed

ridiculously small, far too small and too low to hold him; and when people saw him standing at his door, as

he did all day long, they asked one another how he could possibly get through the door. But he went in

whenever a customer appeared, for it was only right that Toine should be invited to take his thimbleful of

His inn bore the sign: "The Friends' MeetingPlace"and old Toine was, indeed, the friend of all. His

customers came from Fecamp and Montvilliers, just for the fun of seeing him and hearing him talk; for fat

Toine would have made a tombstone laugh. He had a way of chaffing people without offending them, or of

winking to express what he didn't say, of slapping his thighs when he was merry in such a way as to make

you hold your sides, laughing. And then, merely to see him drink was a curiosity. He drank everything that

was offered him, his roguish eyes twinkling, both with the enjoyment of drinking and at the thought of the

money he was taking in. His was a double pleasure: first, that of drinking; and second, that of piling up the

You should have heard him quarrelling with his wife! It was worth paying for to see them together. They had

wrangled all the thirty years they had been married; but Toine was goodhumored, while his betterhalf grew

angry. She was a tall peasant woman, who walked with long steps like a stork, and had a head resembling that

of an angry screechowl. She spent her time rearing chickens in a little poultryyard behind the inn, and she

Whenever the gentry of Fecamp gave a dinner they always had at least one of Madame Toine's chickens to be

But she was born illtempered, and she went through life in a mood of perpetual discontent. Annoyed at

everyone, she seemed to be particularly annoyed at her husband. She disliked his gaiety, his reputation, his

rude health, his embonpoint. She treated him as a goodfornothing creature because he earned his money

without working, and as a glutton because he ate and drank as much as ten ordinary men; and not a day went

"You'd be better in the stye along with the pigs! You're so fat it makes me sick to look at you!"

"Wait! Wait a bit! We'll see! You'll burst one of these fine days like a sack of cornyou old bloat, you!"

"Well, well, old hen, why don't you fatten up your chickens like that? just try!"

And the customers, doubled up with laughter, would thump the table with their fists and stamp their feet on

"Wait a bit! Wait a bit! You'll see what'll happen. He'll burst like a sack of grain!"

Toine was, in fact, an astonishing sight, he was so fat, so heavy, so red. He was one of those enormous beings

with whom Death seems to be amusing himselfplaying perfidious tricks and pranks, investing with an

irresistibly comic air his slow work of destruction. Instead of manifesting his approach, as with others, in

white hairs, in emaciation, in wrinkles, in the gradual collapse which makes the onlookers say: "Gad! how he

has changed!" he took a malicious pleasure in fattening Toine, in making him monstrous and absurd, in

tingeing his face with a deep crimson, in giving him the appearance of superhuman health, and the changes

he inflicts on all were in the case of Toine laughable, comic, amusing, instead of being painful and distressing

At last Toine had an apoplectic fit, and was paralyzed in consequence. The giant was put to bed in the little

room behind the partition of the drinkingroom that he might hear what was said and talk to his friends, for

his head was quite clear although his enormous body was helplessly inert. It was hoped at first that his

immense legs would regain some degree of power; but this hope soon disappeared, and Toine spent his days

and nights in the bed, which was only made up once a week, with the help of four neighbors who lifted the

He kept his spirits, nevertheless; but his gaiety was of a different kindmore timid, more humble; and he

lived in a constant, childlike fear of his wife, who grumbled from morning till night:

"Look at him therethe great glutton! the goodfornothing creature, the old boozer! Serve him right, serve

He no longer answered her. He contented himself with winking behind the old woman's back, and turning

over on his other sidethe only movement of which he was now capable. He called this exercise a "tack to

His great distraction nowadays was to listen to the conversations in the bar, and to shout through the wall

"Not exactly getting about," answered Toine. "But I haven't grown thin; my carcass is still good."

Soon he got into the way of asking his intimates into his room to keep him company, although it grieved him

to see that they had to drink without him. It pained him to the quick that his customers should be drinking

"That's what hurts worst of all," he would say: "that I cannot drink my ExtraSpecial any more. I can put up

Then his wife's screechowl face would appear at the window, and she would break in with the words:

"Look at him! Look at him now, the goodfornothing wretch! I've got to feed him and wash him just as if

And when the old woman had gone, a cock with red feathers would sometimes fly up to the window sill and

looking into the room with his round inquisitive eye, would begin to crow loudly. Occasionally, too, a few

hens would flutter as far as the foot of the bed, seeking crumbs on the floor. Toine's friends soon deserted the

drinking room to come and chat every afternoon beside the invalid's bed. Helpless though he was, the jovial

Toine still provided them with amusement. He would have made the devil himself laugh. Three men were

regular in their attendance at the bedside: Celestin Maloisel, a tall, thin fellow, somewhat gnarled, like the

trunk of an appletree; Prosper Horslaville, a withered little man with a ferret nose, cunning as a fox; and

Cesaire Paumelle, who never spoke, but who enjoyed Toine's society all the same.

They brought a plank from the yard, propped it upon the edge of the bed, and played dominoes from two till

But Toine's wife soon became insufferable. She could not endure that her fat, lazy husband should amuse

himself at games while lying in his bed; and whenever she caught him beginning a game she pounced

furiously on the dominoes, overturned the plank, and carried all away into the bar, declaring that it was quite

enough to have to feed that fat, lazy pig without seeing him amusing himself, as if to annoy poor people who

Celestin Maloisel and Cesaire Paumelle bent their heads to the storm, but Prosper Horslaville egged on the

"Your man is as hot as an oven, and he never leaves his bedwell, I'd make him hatch some eggs."

She was struck dumb at the suggestion, thinking that Prosper could not possibly be in earnest. But he

"I'd put five under one arm, and five under the other, the same day that I set a hen. They'd all come out at the

same time; then I'd take your husband's chickens to the hen to bring up with her own. You'd rear a fine lot

"Could it be done?" echoed the man. "Why not? Since eggs can be hatched in a warm box why shouldn't they

"I've just put the yellow hen on ten eggs. Here are ten for you; try not to break them."

He laughed at first; then, finding she was serious, he got angry, and refused absolutely to have the eggs put

"You'll get no dinner as long as you won't have them. You'll see what'll happen."

He thought she must be joking, and waited a while. Then he begged, implored, swore, "tacked to the north"

and "tacked to the south," and beat on the wall with his fists, but had to consent at last to five eggs being

When his friends arrived that afternoon they thought he must be ill, he seemed so constrained and queer.

They started the daily game of dominoes. But Tome appeared to take no pleasure in it, and reached forth his

It was the mayor with the deputy. They ordered two glasses of Extra Special, and began to discuss local

affairs. As they were talking in somewhat low tones Toine wanted to put his ear to the wall, and, forgetting

all about his eggs, he made a sudden "tack to the north," which had the effect of plunging him into the midst

At the loud oath he swore his wife came hurrying into the room, and, guessing what had happened, stripped

the bedclothes from him with lightning rapidity. She stood at first without moving or uttering a syllable,

speechless with indignation at sight of the yellow poultice sticking to her husband's side.

Then, trembling with fury, she threw herself on the paralytic, showering on him blows such as those with

which she cleaned her linen on the seashore. Tome's three friends were choking with laughter, coughing,

spluttering and shouting, and the fat innkeeper himself warded his wife's attacks with all the prudence of

which he was capable, that he might not also break the five eggs at his other side.

Tome was conquered. He had to hatch eggs, he had to give up his games of dominoes and renounce

movement of any sort, for the old woman angrily deprived him of food whenever he broke an egg.

He lay on his back, with eyes fixed on the ceiling, motionless, his arms raised like wings, warming against

He spoke now only in hushed tones; as if he feared a noise as much as motion, and he took a feverish interest

And the old woman went from her fowls to her husband and from her husband to her fowls, devoured by

anxiety as to the welfare of the little chickens who were maturing in the bed and in the nest.

The country people who knew the story came, agog with curiosity, to ask news of Toine. They entered his

"Will it soon be over?" he asked, with the anguish of a woman who is about to become a mother.

"It's to be hoped so!" answered the old woman crossly, haunted by fear of failure.

They waited. Friends of Toine who had got wind that his time was drawing near arrived, and filled the little

Nothing else was talked about in the neighboring cottages. Inquirers asked one another for news as they stood

About three o'clock Toine fell asleep. He slumbered half his time nowadays. He was suddenly awakened by

an unaccustomed tickling under his right arm. He put his left hand on the spot, and seized a little creature

His emotion was so great that he cried out, and let go his hold of the chicken, which ran over his chest. The

bar was full of people at the time. The customers rushed to Toine's room, and made a circle round him as they

would round a travelling showman; while Madame Toine picked up the chicken, which had taken refuge

No one spoke, so great was the tension. It was a warm April day. Outside the window the yellow hen could

His' wife plunged her great bony hand into the bed, and pulled out a second chicken with all the care of a

The neighbors wanted to see it. It was passed from one to another, and examined as if it were a phenomenon.

For twenty minutes no more hatched out, then four emerged at the same moment from their shells.

There was a great commotion among the lookerson. And Toine smiled with satisfaction, beginning to take

pride in this unusual sort of paternity. There were not many like him! Truly, he was a remarkable specimen of

And a loud laugh rose from all present. Newcomers filled the bar. They asked one another:

Toine's wife took this new family to the hen, who clucked loudly, bristled her feathers, and spread her wings

He was mistaken. There were three! It was an unalloyed triumph! The last chicken broke through its shell at

seven o'clock in the evening. All the eggs were good! And Toine, beside himself with joy, his brood hatched

out, exultant, kissed the tiny creature on the back, almost suffocating it. He wanted to keep it in his bed until

morning, moved by a mother's tenderness toward the tiny being which he had brought to life, but the old

woman carried it away like the others, turning a deaf ear to her husband's entreaties.

The delighted spectators went off to spread the news of the event, and Horslaville, who was the last to go,

We had just left Gisors, where I was awakened to hearing the name of the town called out by the guards, and

I was dozing off again when a terrific shock threw me forward on top of a large lady who sat opposite me.

One of the wheels of the engine had broken, and the engine itself lay across the track. The tender and the

baggage car were also derailed, and lay beside this mutilated engine, which rattled, groaned, hissed, puffed,

sputtered, and resembled those horses that fall in the street with their flanks heaving, their breast palpitating,

their nostrils steaming and their whole body trembling, but incapable of the slightest effort to rise and start

There were no dead or wounded; only a few with bruises, for the train was not going at full speed. And we

looked with sorrow at the great crippled iron creature that could not draw us along any more, and that

blocked the track, perhaps for some time, for no doubt they would have to send to Paris for a special train to

It was then ten o'clock in the morning, and I at once decided to go back to Gisors for breakfast.

Who is it? Gisors? Let me see, I have a friend in this town." A name suddenly came to my mind, "Albert

Marambot." He was an old school friend whom I had not seen for at least twelve years, and who was

practicing medicine in Gisors. He had often written, inviting me to come and see him, and I had always

promised to do so, without keeping my word. But at last I would take advantage of this opportunity.

I presently saw, on the door of the house he pointed out, a large brass plate on which was engraved the name

of my old chum. I rang the bell, but the servant, a yellowhaired girl who moved slowly, said with a Stupid

A door opened and a large man, with whiskers and a cross look on his face, appeared, carrying a dinner

I certainly should not have recognized him. One would have said he was fortyfive at least, and, in a second,

all the provincial life which makes one grow heavy, dull and old came before me. In a single flash of thought,

quicker than the act of extending my hand to him, I could see his life, his manner of existence, his line of

thought and his theories of things in general. I guessed at the prolonged meals that had rounded out his

stomach, his afterdinner naps from the torpor of a slow indigestion aided by cognac, and his vague glances

cast on the patient while he thought of the chicken that was roasting before the fire. His conversations about

cooking, about cider, brandy and wine, the way of preparing certain dishes and of blending certain sauces

were revealed to me at sight of his puffy red cheeks, his heavy lips and his lustreless eyes.

"How fortunate! I was just sitting down to table and I have an excellent trout."

"Time does not hang heavy; I am busy. I have patients and friends. I eat well, have good health, enjoy

"No, my dear boy, not when one knows how to fill in the time. A little town, in fact, is like a large one. The

incidents and amusements are less varied, but one makes more of them; one has fewer acquaintances, but one

meets them more frequently. When you know all the windows in a street, each one of them interests you and

"A little town is very amusing, you know, very amusing, very amusing. Why, take Gisors. I know it at the

tips of my fingers, from its beginning up to the present time. You have no idea what queer history it has."

"I? No. I come from Gournay, its neighbor and rival. Gournay is to Gisors what Lucullus was to Cicero.

Here, everything is for glory; they say 'the proud people of Gisors.' At Gournay, everything is for the

stomach; they say 'the chewers of Gournay.' Gisors despises Gournay, but Gournay laughs at Gisors. It is a

I perceived that I was eating something very delicious, hardboiled eggs wrapped in a covering of meat jelly

flavored with herbs and put on ice for a few moments. I said as I smacked my lips to compliment Marambot:

"Two things are necessary, good jelly, which is hard to get, and good eggs. Oh, how rare good eggs are, with

the yolks slightly reddish, and with a good flavor! I have two poultry yards, one for eggs and the other for

chickens. I feed my laying hens in a special manner. I have my own ideas on the subject. In an egg, as in the

meat of a chicken, in beef, or in mutton, in milk, in everything, one perceives, and ought to taste, the juice,

the quintessence of all the food on which the animal has fed. How much better food we could have if more

"Parbleu. It is only imbeciles who are not. One is a gourmand as one is an artist, as one is learned, as one is a

poet. The sense of taste, my friend, is very delicate, capable of perfection, and quite as worthy of respect as

the eye and the ear. A person who lacks this sense is deprived of an exquisite faculty, the faculty of

discerning the quality of food, just as one may lack the faculty of discerning the beauties of a book or of a

work of art; it means to be deprived of an essential organ, of something that belongs to higher humanity; it

means to belong to one of those innumerable classes of the infirm, the unfortunate, and the fools of which our

race is composed; it means to have the mouth of an animal, in a word, just like the mind of an animal. A man

who cannot distinguish one kind of lobster from another; a herringthat admirable fish that has all the

flavors, all the odors of the seafrom a mackerel or a whiting; and a Cresane from a Duchess pear, may be

compared to a man who should mistake Balzac for Eugene Sue; a symphony of Beethoven for a military

march composed by the bandmaster of a regiment; and the Apollo Belvidere for the statue of General de

"Oh, that's true, you do not know. It is easy to tell that you do not belong to Gisors. I told you just now, my

dear boy, that they called the inhabitants of this town 'the proud people of Gisors,' and never was an epithet

better deserved. But let us finish breakfast first, and then I will tell you about our town and take you to see it."

He stopped talking every now and then while he slowly drank a glass of wine which he gazed at

It was amusing to see him, with a napkin tied around his neck, his cheeks flushed, his eyes eager, and his

He made me eat until I was almost choking. Then, as I was about to return to the railway station, he seized

me by the arm and took me through the streets. The town, of a pretty, provincial type, commanded by its

citadel, the most curious monument of military architecture of the seventh century to be found in France,

overlooks, in its turn, a long, green valley, where the large Norman cows graze and ruminate in the pastures.

"'Gisors, a town of 4,000 inhabitants in the department of Eure, mentioned in Caesar's Commentaries:

Caesaris ostium, then Caesartium, Caesortium, Gisortium, Gisors.' I shall not take you to visit the old Roman

"My dear friend, it seems to me that you are affected with a special malady that, as a doctor, you ought to

"The spirit of provincialism, my friend, is nothing but natural patriotism," he said. "I love my house, my town

and my province because I discover in them the customs of my own village; but if I love my country, if I

become angry when a neighbor sets foot in it, it is because I feel that my home is in danger, because the

frontier that I do not know is the high road to my province. For instance, I am a Norman, a true Norman;

well, in spite of my hatred of the German and my desire for revenge, I do not detest them, I do not hate them

by instinct as I hate the English, the real, hereditary natural enemy of the Normans; for the English traversed

this soil inhabited by my ancestors, plundered and ravaged it twenty times, and my aversion to this perfidious

people was transmitted to me at birth by my father. See, here is the statue of the general."

"General Blaumont! We had to have a statue. We are not 'the proud people of Gisors' for nothing! So we

He drew me towards the bookstore, where about fifteen red, yellow and blue volumes attracted the eye. As I

Gisors, its origin, its future, by M. X. . . ., member of several learned societies; History of Gisors, by the

Abbe A . . . .; Gasors from the time of Caesar to the present day, by M. B. . . ., Landowner; Gisors and its

"My friend," resumed Marambot, "not a year, not a single year, you understand, passes without a fresh

"Oh, I will not mention them all, only the principal ones. We had first General de Blaumont, then Baron

Davillier, the celebrated ceramist who explored Spain and the Balearic Isles, and brought to the notice of

collectors the wonderful HispanoArabic china. In literature we have a very clever journalist, now dead,

Charles Brainne, and among those who are living, the very eminent editor of the Nouvelliste de Rouen,

We were traversing along street with a gentle incline, with a June sun beating down on it and driving the

Suddenly there appeared at the farther end of the street a drunken man who was staggering along, with his

head forward his arms and legs limp. He would walk forward rapidly three, six, or ten steps and then stop.

When these energetic movements landed him in the middle of the road he stopped short and swayed on his

feet, hesitating between falling and a fresh start. Then he would dart off in any direction, sometimes falling

against the wall of a house, against which he seemed to be fastened, as though he were trying to get in

through the wall. Then he would suddenly turn round and look ahead of him, his mouth open and his eyes

blinking in the sunlight, and getting away from the wall by a movement of the hips, he started off once more.

A little yellow dog, a halfstarved cur, followed him, barking; stopping when he stopped, and starting off

"Oh, that is what we call drunkards round here. The name comes from an old story which has now become a

There lived formerly in this town a very upright old lady who was a great guardian of morals and was called

Mme. Husson. You know, I am telling you the real names and not imaginary ones. Mme. Husson took a

special interest in good works, in helping the poor and encouraging the deserving. She was a little woman

with a quick walk and wore a black wig. She was ceremonious, polite, on very good terms with the Almighty

in the person of Abby Malon, and had a profound horror, an inborn horror of vice, and, in particular, of the

vice the Church calls lasciviousness. Any irregularity before marriage made her furious, exasperated her till

Now, this was the period when they presented a prize as a reward of virtue to any girl in the environs of Paris

who was found to be chaste. She was called a Rosiere, and Mme. Husson got the idea that she would institute

a similar ceremony at Gisors. She spoke about it to Abbe Malon, who at once made out a list of candidates.

However, Mme. Husson had a servant, an old woman called Francoise, as upright as her mistress. As soon as

"Here, Francoise, here are the girls whose names M. le cure has submitted to me for the prize of virtue; try

And Francoise set out. She collected all the scandal, all the stories, all the tattle, all the suspicions. That she

might omit nothing, she wrote it all down together with her memoranda in her housekeeping book, and

handed it each morning to Mme. Husson, who, after adjusting her spectacles on her thin nose, read as

Josephine Durdent, who is not believed to have committed a fault, although she corresponds with young

Oportun, who is in service in Rouen, and who sent her a present of a cap by diligence.

Not one came out unscathed in this rigorous inquisition. Francoise inquired of everyone, neighbors, drapers,

the principal, the teaching sisters at school, and gathered the slightest details.

As there is not a girl in the world about whom gossips have not found something to say, there was not found

But Mme. Husson desired that the "Rosiere" of Gisors, like Caesar's wife, should be above suspicion, and she

was horrified, saddened and in despair at the record in her servant's housekeeping accountbook.

They then extended their circle of inquiries to the neighboring villages; but with no satisfaction.

They consulted the mayor. His candidates failed. Those of Dr. Barbesol were equally unlucky, in spite of the

But one morning Francoise, on returning from one of her expeditions, said to her mistress:

"You see, madame, that if you wish to give a prize to anyone, there is only Isidore in all the country round."

Mme. Husson remained thoughtful. She knew him well, this Isidore, the son of Virginie the greengrocer. His

proverbial virtue had been the delight of Gisors for several years, and served as an entertaining theme of

conversation in the town, and of amusement to the young girls who loved to tease him. He was past

twentyone, was tall, awkward, slow and timid; helped his mother in the business, and spent his days picking

He had an abnormal dread of a petticoat and cast down his eyes whenever a female customer looked at him

smilingly, and this wellknown timidity made him the butt of all the wags in the country.

Bold words, coarse expressions, indecent allusions, brought the color to his cheeks so quickly that Dr.

Barbesol had nicknamed him "the thermometer of modesty." Was he as innocent as he looked? illnatured

people asked themselves. Was it the mere presentiment of unknown and shameful mysteries or else

indignation at the relations ordained as the concomitant of love that so strongly affected the son of Virginie

the greengrocer? The urchins of the neighborhood as they ran past the shop would fling disgusting remarks at

him just to see him cast down his eyes. The girls amused themselves by walking up and down before him,

cracking jokes that made him go into the store. The boldest among them teased him to his face just to have a

laugh, to amuse themselves, made appointments with him and proposed all sorts of things.

Certainly, Isidore was an exceptional case of notorious, unassailable virtue. No one, among the most

sceptical, most incredulous, would have been able, would have dared, to suspect Isidore of the slightest

infraction of any law of morality. He had never been seen in a cafe, never been seen at night on the street. He

But Mme. Husson still hesitated. The idea of substituting a boy for a girl, a "rosier" for a rosiere," troubled

"What do you desire to reward, madame? It is virtue, is it not, and nothing but virtue? What does it matter to

you, therefore, if it is masculine or feminine? Virtue is eternal; it has neither sex nor country; it is 'Virtue.'"

"We will have a fine ceremony," he said. "And another year if we can find a girl as worthy as Isidore we will

give the reward to her. It will even be a good example that we shall set to Nanterre. Let us not be exclusive;

The ceremony was fixed for the 15th of August, the festival of the Virgin Mary and of the Emperor

Napoleon. The municipality had decided to make an imposing ceremony and had built the platform on the

couronneaux, a delightful extension of the ramparts of the old citadel where I will take you presently.

With the natural revulsion of public feeling, the virtue of Isidore, ridiculed hitherto, had suddenly become

respected and envied, as it would bring him in five hundred francs besides a savings bank book, a mountain

of consideration, and glory enough and to spare. The girls now regretted their frivolity, their ridicule, their

bold manners; and Isidore, although still modest and timid, had now a little contented air that bespoke his

The evening before the 15th of August the entire Rue Dauphine was decorated with flags. Oh, I forgot to tell

It seems that the wife or mother of the dauphin, I do not remember which one, while visiting Gisors had been

feted so much by the authorities that during a triumphal procession through the town she stopped before one

"Oh, the pretty house! How I should like to go through it! To whom does it belong?"

They told her the name of the owner, who was sent for and brought, proud and embarrassed, before the

princess. She alighted from her carriage, went into the house, wishing to go over it from top to bottom, and

When she came out, the people, flattered at this honor paid to a citizen of Gisors, shouted "Long live the

dauphine!" But a rhymester wrote some words to a refrain, and the street retained the title of her royal

They had scattered flowers all along the road as they do for processions at the FeteDieu, and the National

Guard was present, acting on the orders of their chief, Commandant Desbarres, an old soldier of the Grand

Army, who pointed with pride to the beard of a Cossack cut with a single sword stroke from the chin of its

owner by the commandant during the retreat in Russia, and which hung beside the frame containing the cross

The regiment that he commanded was, besides, a picked regiment celebrated all through the province, and the

company of grenadiers of Gisors was called on to attend all important ceremonies for a distance of fifteen to

twenty leagues. The story goes that Louis Philippe, while reviewing the militia of Eure, stopped in

So Commandant Desbarres came at the head of his men, preceded by the band, to get Isidore in his mother's

After a little air had been played by the band beneath the windows, the "Rosier" himself appearedon the

threshold. He was dressed in white duck from head to foot and wore a straw hat with a little bunch of orange

The question of his clothes had bothered Mme. Husson a good deal, and she hesitated some time between the

black coat of those who make their first communion and an entire white suit. But Francoise, her counsellor,

induced her to decide on the white suit, pointing out that the Rosier would look like a swan.

Behind him came his guardian, his godmother, Mme. Husson, in triumph. She took his arm to go out of the

store, and the mayor placed himself on the other side of the Rosier. The drums beat. Commandant Desbarres

gave the order "Present arms!" The procession resumed its march towards the church amid an immense

After a short mass and an affecting discourse by Abbe Malon, they continued on their way to the

Before taking their seats at table, the mayor gave an address. This is it, word for word. I learned it by heart:

"Young man, a woman of means, beloved by the poor and respected by the rich, Mme. Husson, whom the

whole country is thanking here, through me, had the idea, the happy and benevolent idea, of founding in this

town a prize for, virtue, which should serve as a valuable encouragement to the inhabitants of this beautiful

"You, young man, are the first to be rewarded in this dynasty of goodness and chastity. Your name will

remain at the head of this list of the most deserving, and your life, understand me, your whole life, must

correspond to this happy commencement. Today, in presence of this noble woman, of these soldiercitizens

who have taken up their arms in your honor, in presence of this populace, affected, assembled to applaud you,

or, rather, to applaud virtue, in your person, you make a solemn contract with the town, with all of us, to

"Do not forget, young man, that you are the first seed cast into this field of hope; give us the fruits that we

The mayor advanced three steps, opened his arms and pressed Isidore to his heart.

The "Rosier" was sobbing without knowing why, from a confused emotion, from pride and a vague and

Then the mayor placed in one hand a silk purse in which gold tingled five hundred francs in gold!and in

Commandant Desbarres shouted "Bravo!" the grenadiers vociferated, and the crowd applauded.

Mme. Husson wiped her eyes, in her turn. Then they all sat down at the table where the banquet was served.

The repast was magnificent and seemed interminable. One course followed another; yellow cider and red

wine in fraternal contact blended in the stomach of the guests. The rattle of plates, the sound of voices, and of

music softly played, made an incessant deep hum, and was dispersed abroad in the clear sky where the

swallows were flying. Mme. Husson occasionally readjusted her black wig, which would slip over on one

side, and chatted with Abbe Malon. The mayor, who was excited, talked politics with Commandant

Desbarres, and Isidore ate, drank, as if he had never eaten or drunk before. He helped himself repeatedly to

all the dishes, becoming aware for the first time of the pleasure of having one's belly full of good things

which tickle the palate in the first place. He had let out a reef in his belt and, without speaking, and although

he was a little uneasy at a wine stain on his white waistcoat, he ceased eating in order to take up his glass and

It was time for the toasts. They were many and loudly applauded. Evening was approaching and they had

been at the table since noon. Fine, milky vapors were already floating in the air in the valley, the light

nightrobe of streams and meadows; the sun neared the horizon; the cows were lowing in the distance amid

the mists of the pasture. The feast was over. They returned to Gisors. The procession, now disbanded, walked

in detachments. Mme. Husson had taken Isidore's arm and was giving him a quantity of urgent, excellent

They stopped at the door of the fruit store, and the "Rosier" was left at his mother's house. She had not come

home yet. Having been invited by her family to celebrate her son's triumph, she had taken luncheon with her

So Isidore remained alone in the store, which was growing dark. He sat down on a chair, excited by the wine

and by pride, and looked about him. Carrots, cabbages, and onions gave out their strong odor of vegetables in

the closed room, that coarse smell of the garden blended with the sweet, penetrating odor of strawberries and

The "Rosier" took one of these and ate it, although he was as full as an egg. Then, all at once, wild with joy,

He was surprised, and put his hand in his pocket and brought out the purse containing the five hundred francs,

which he had forgotten in his agitation. Five hundred francs! What a fortune! He poured the gold pieces out

on the counter and spread them out with his big hand with a slow, caressing touch so as to see them all at the

same time. There were twentyfive, twentyfive round gold pieces, all gold! They glistened on the wood in

the dim light and he counted them over and over, one by one. Then he put them back in the purse, which he

Who will ever know or who can tell what a terrible conflict took place in the soul of the "Rosier" between

good and evil, the tumultuous attack of Satan, his artifices, the temptations which he offered to this timid

virgin heart? What suggestions, what imaginations, what desires were not invented by the evil one to excite

and destroy this chosen one? He seized his hat, Mme. Husson's saint, his hat, which still bore the little bunch

of orange blossoms, and going out through the alley at the back of the house, he disappeared in the darkness.

Virginie, the fruiterer, on learning that her son had returned, went home at once, and found the house empty.

She waited, without thinking anything about it at first; but at the end of a quarter of an hour she made

inquiries. The neighbors had seen Isidore come home and had not seen him go out again. They began to look

for him, but could not find him. His mother, in alarm, went to the mayor. The mayor knew nothing, except

that he had left him at the door of his home. Mme. Husson had just retired when they informed her that her

protege had disappeared. She immediately put on her wig, dressed herself and went to Virginie's house.

Virginie, whose plebeian soul was readily moved, was weeping copiously amid her cabbages, carrots and

They feared some accident had befallen him. What could it be? Commandant Desbarres notified the police,

who made a circuit of the town, and on the high road to Pontoise they found the little bunch of orange

blossoms. It was placed on a table around which the authorities were deliberating. The "Rosier" must have

been the victim of some stratagem, some trick, some jealousy; but in what way? What means had been

Weary of looking for him without any result, Virginie, alone, remained watching and weeping.

The following evening, when the coach passed by on its return from Paris, Gisors learned with astonishment

that its "Rosier" had stopped the vehicle at a distance of about two hundred metres from the town, had

climbed up on it and paid his fare, handing over a gold piece and receiving the change, and that he had

There was great excitement all through the countryside. Letters passed between the mayor and the chief of

Now, one morning, Dr. Barbesol, who had gone out early, perceived, sitting on a doorstep, a man dressed in a

grimy linen suit, who was sleeping with his head leaning against the wall. He approached him and recognized

Isidore. He tried to rouse him, but did not succeed in doing so. The ex"Rosier" was in that profound,

invincible sleep that is alarming, and the doctor, in surprise, went to seek assistance to help him in carrying

the young man to Boncheval's drugstore. When they lifted him up they found an empty bottle under him, and

when the doctor sniffed at it, he declared that it had contained brandy. That gave a suggestion as to what

Isidore was drunk, drunk and degraded by a week of guzzling, drunk and so disgusting that a ragman would

not have touched him. His beautiful white duck suit was a gray rag, greasy, muddy, torn, and destroyed, and

He was washed, sermonized, shut up, and did not leave the house for four days. He seemed ashamed and

repentant. They could not find on him either his purse, containing the five hundred francs, or the bankbook,

On the fifth day he ventured into the Rue Dauphine, Curious glances followed him and he walked along with

a furtive expression in his eyes and his head bent down. As he got outside the town towards the valley they

lost sight of him; but two hours later he returned laughing and rolling against the walls. He was drunk,

Driven from home by his mother, he became a wagon driver, and drove the charcoal wagons for the Pougrisel

His reputation as a drunkard became so well known and spread so far that even at Evreux they talked of

Mme. Husson's "Rosier," and the sots of the countryside have been given that nickname.

We had arrived at the old citadel, a pile of ruined walls dominated by the enormous tower of St. Thomas of

Marambot told me the story of this prisoner, who, with the aid of a nail, covered the walls of his dungeon

with sculptures, tracing the reflections of the sun as it glanced through the narrow slit of a loophole.

I also learned that Clothaire II had given the patrimony of Gisors to his cousin, Saint Romain, bishop of

Rouen; that Gisors ceased to be the capital of the whole of Vexin after the treaty of SaintClairsurEpte;

that the town is the chief strategic centre of all that portion of France, and that in consequence of this

advantage she was taken and retaken over and over again. At the command of William the Red, the eminent

engineer, Robert de Bellesme, constructed there a powerful fortress that was attacked later by Louis le Gros,

then by the Norman barons, was defended by Robert de Candos, was finally ceded to Louis le Gros by

Geoffry Plantagenet, was retaken by the English in consequence of the treachery of the KnightsTemplars,

was contested by PhilippeAugustus and Richard the Lionhearted, was set on fire by Edward III of England,

who could not take the castle, was again taken by the English in 1419, restored later to Charles VIII by

Richard de Marbury, was taken by the Duke of Calabria occupied by the League, inhabited by Henry IV, etc.,

"What beggars, those English! And what sots, my boy; they are all 'Rosiers,' those hypocrites!"

Then, after a silence, stretching out his arm towards the tiny river that glistened in the meadows, he said:

"Did you know that Henry Monnier was one of the most untiring fishermen on the banks of the Epte?"

The two cottages stood beside each other at the foot of a hill near a little seashore resort. The two peasants

labored hard on the unproductive soil to rear their little ones, and each family had four.

Before the adjoining doors a whole troop of urchins played and tumbled about from morning till night. The

two eldest were six years old, and the youngest were about fifteen months; the marriages, and afterward the

The two mothers could hardly distinguish their own offspring among the lot, and as for the fathers, they were

altogether at sea. The eight names danced in their heads; they were always getting them mixed up; and when

they wished to call one child, the men often called three names before getting the right one.

The first of the two cottages, as you came up from the bathing beach, Rolleport, was occupied by the

Tuvaches, who had three girls and one boy; the other house sheltered the Vallins, who had one girl and three

They all subsisted frugally on soup, potatoes and fresh air. At seven o'clock in the morning, then at noon,

then at six o'clock in the evening, the housewives got their broods together to give them their food, as the

gooseherds collect their charges. The children were seated, according to age, before the wooden table,

varnished by fifty years of use; the mouths of the youngest hardly reaching the level of the table. Before them

was placed a bowl filled with bread, soaked in the water in which the potatoes had been boiled, half a

cabbage and three onions; and the whole line ate until their hunger was appeased. The mother herself fed the

A small pot roast on Sunday was a feast for all; and the father on this day sat longer over the meal, repeating:

One afternoon, in the month of August, a phaeton stopped suddenly in front of the cottages, and a young

"Oh, look at all those children, Henri! How pretty they are, tumbling about in the dust, like that!"

The man did not answer, accustomed to these outbursts of admiration, which were a pain and almost a

"I must hug them! Oh, how I should like to have one of themthat one therethe little tiny one!"

Springing down from the carriage, she ran toward the children, took one of the two youngesta Tuvache

childand lifting it up in her arms, she kissed him passionately on his dirty cheeks, on his tousled hair

daubed with earth, and on his little hands, with which he fought vigorously, to get away from the caresses

Then she got into the carriage again, and drove off at a lively trot. But she returned the following week, and

seating herself on the ground, took the youngster in her arms, stuffed him with cakes; gave candies to all the

others, and played with them like a young girl, while the husband waited patiently in the carriage.

She returned again; made the acquaintance of the parents, and reappeared every day with her pockets full of

One morning, on arriving, her husband alighted with her, and without stopping to talk to the children, who

They were busy chopping wood for the fire. They rose to their feet in surprise, brought forward chairs, and

"My good people, I have come to see you, because I should likeI should like to takeyour little boy with

She recovered her breath, and continued: "We are alone, my husband and I. We would keep it. Are you

"My wife has not made her meaning clear. We wish to adopt him, but he will come back to see you. If he

turns out well, as there is every reason to expect, he will be our heir. If we, perchance, should have children,

he will share equally with them; but if he should not reward our care, we should give him, when he comes of

age, a sum of twenty thousand francs, which shall be deposited immediately in his name, with a lawyer. As

we have thought also of you, we should pay you, until your death, a pension of one hundred francs a month.

"You want me to sell you Charlot? Oh, no, that's not the sort of thing to ask of a mother! Oh, no! That would

The man, grave and deliberate, said nothing; but approved of what his wife said by a continued nodding of

Madame d'Hubieres, in dismay, began to weep; turning to her husband, with a voice full of tears, the voice of

Then he made a last attempt: "But, my friends, think of the child's future, of his happiness, of"

"It's all considered! It's all understood! Get out of here, and don't let me see you againthe idea of wanting

Madame d'Hubieres remembered that there were two children, quite little, and she asked, through her tears,

Father Tuvache answered: "No, it is our neighbors'. You can go to them if you wish." And he went back into

The Vallins were at table, slowly eating slices of bread which they parsimoniously spread with a little rancid

M. d'Hubieres recommenced his proposals, but with more insinuations, more oratorical precautions, more

The two country people shook their heads, in sign of refusal, but when they learned that they were to have a

hundred francs a month, they considered the matter, consulting one another by glances, much disturbed. They

kept silent for a long time, tortured, hesitating. At last the woman asked: "What do you say to it, man?" In a

Madame d'Hubieres, trembling with anguish, spoke of the future of their child, of his happiness, and of the

The peasant asked: "This pension of twelve hundred francs, will it be promised before a lawyer?"

"A hundred francs a month is not enough to pay for depriving us of the child. That child would be working in

Tapping her foot with impatience, Madame d'Hubieres granted it at once, and, as she wished to carry off the

child with her, she gave a hundred francs extra, as a present, while her husband drew up a paper. And the

young woman, radiant, carried off the howling brat, as one carries away a wishedfor knickknack from a

The Tuvaches, from their door, watched her departure, silent, serious, perhaps regretting their refusal.

Nothing more was heard of little Jean Vallin. The parents went to the lawyer every month to collect their

hundred and twenty francs. They had quarrelled with their neighbors, because Mother Tuvache grossly

insulted them, continually, repeating from door to door that one must be unnatural to sell one's child; that it

was horrible, disgusting, bribery. Sometimes she would take her Charlot in her arms, ostentatiously

"I didn't sell you, I didn't! I didn't sell you, my little one! I'm not rich, but I don't sell my children!"

The Vallins lived comfortably, thanks to the pension. That was the cause of the unappeasable fury of the

Tuvaches, who had remained miserably poor. Their eldest went away to serve his time in the army; Charlot

alone remained to labor with his old father, to support the mother and two younger sisters.

He had reached twentyone years when, one morning, a brilliant carriage stopped before the two cottages. A

young gentleman, with a gold watch chain, got out, giving his hand to an aged, whitehaired lady. The old

lady said to him: "It is there, my child, at the second house." And he entered the house of the Vallins as

The old mother was washing her aprons; the infirm father slumbered at the chimneycorner. Both raised their

They both stood up, frightened! In a flutter, the peasant woman dropped her soap into the water, and

He took her in his arms and hugged her, repeating: "Goodmorning, mamma," while the old man, all

atremble, said, in his calm tone which he never lost: "Here you are, back again, Jean," as if he had just seen

When they had got to know one another again, the parents wished to take their boy out in the neighborhood,

and show him. They took him to the mayor, to the deputy, to the cure, and to the schoolmaster.

Charlot, standing on the threshold of his cottage, watched him pass. In the evening, at supper, he said to the

"Are you going to reproach us for having kept you?" And the young man said, brutally:

"Yes, I reproach you for having been such fools. Parents like you make the misfortune of their children. You

deserve that I should leave you." The old woman wept over her plate. She moaned, as she swallowed the

spoonfuls of soup, half of which she spilled: "One may kill one's self to bring up children!"

Then the boy said, roughly: "I'd rather not have been born than be what I am. When I saw the other, my heart

stood still. I said to myself: 'See what I should have been now!'" He got up: "See here, I feel that I would do

better not to stay here, because I would throw it up to you from morning till night, and I would make your life

He continued: "No, the thought of that would be too much. I'd rather look for a living somewhere else."

He opened the door. A sound of voices came in at the door. The Vallins were celebrating the return of their

In society he was called "Handsome Signoles." His name was Vicomte GontranJoseph de Signoles.

An orphan, and possessed of an ample fortune, he cut quite a dash, as it is called. He had an attractive

appearance and manner, could talk well, had a certain inborn elegance, an air of pride and nobility, a good

He was in great request at receptions, waltzed to perfection, and was regarded by his own sex with that

smiling hostility accorded to the popular society man. He had been suspected of more than one love affair,

calculated to enhance the reputation of a bachelor. He lived a happy, peaceful lifea life of physical and

mental wellbeing. He had won considerable fame as a swordsman, and still more as a marksman.

"When the time comes for me to fight a duel," he said, "I shall choose pistols. With such a weapon I am sure

One evening, having accompanied two women friends of his with their husbands to the theatre, he invited

them to take some ice cream at Tortoni's after the performance. They had been seated a few minutes in the

restaurant when Signoles noticed that a man was staring persistently at one of the ladies. She seemed

"Nonsense! Don't take any notice of him. If we were to bother our heads about all the illmannered people

But the vicomte abruptly left his seat. He could not allow this insolent fellow to spoil an ice for a guest of his.

It was for him to take cognizance of the offence, since it was through him that his friends had come to the

"Sir, you are staring at those ladies in a manner I cannot permit. I must ask you to desist from your rudeness."

"Take care, sir," said the vicomte between his teeth, "or you will force me to extreme measures."

The man replied with a single worda foul word, which could be heard from one end of the restaurant to the

other, and which startled every one there. All those whose backs were toward the two disputants turned

round; all the others raised their heads; three waiters spun round on their heels like tops; the two lady cashiers

jumped, as if shot, then turned their bodies simultaneously, like two automata worked by the same spring.

There was dead silence. Then suddenly a sharp, crisp sound. The vicomte had slapped his adversary's face.

When the vicomte reached home he walked rapidly up and down his room for some minutes. He was in a

state of too great agitation to think connectedly. One idea alone possessed him: a duel. But this idea aroused

in him as yet no emotion of any kind. He had done what he was bound to do; he had proved himself to be

what he ought to be. He would be talked about, approved, congratulated. He repeated aloud, speaking as one

"What a brute of a man!" Then he sat down, and began to reflect. He would have to find seconds as soon as

morning came. Whom should he choose? He bethought himself of the most influential and bestknown men

of his acquaintance. His choice fell at last on the Marquis de la Tour Noire and Colonel Bourdina

nobleman and a soldier. That would be just the thing. Their names would carry weight in the newspapers. He

was thirsty, and drank three glasses of water, one after another; then he walked up and down again. If he

showed himself brave, deter mined, prepared to face a duel in deadly earnest, his adversary would probably

draw back and proffer excuses. He picked up the card he had taken from his pocket and thrown on a table. He

read it again, as he had already read it, first at a glance in the restaurant, and afterward on the way home in

He examined closely this collection of letters, which seemed to him mysterious, fraught with many meanings.

Georges Lamil! Who was the man? What was his profession? Why had he stared so at the woman? Was it not

monstrous that a stranger, an unknown, should thus all at once upset one's whole life, simply because it had

pleased him to stare rudely at a woman? And the vicomte once more repeated aloud:

Then he stood motionless, thinking, his eyes still fixed on the card. Anger rose in his heart against this scrap

of papera resentful anger, mingled with a strange sense of uneasiness. It was a stupid business altogether!

He took up a penknife which lay open within reach, and deliberately stuck it into the middle of the printed

So he would have to fight! Should he choose swords or pistols?for he considered himself as the insulted

party. With the sword he would risk less, but with the pistol there was some chance of his adversary backing

out. A duel with swords is rarely fatal, since mutual prudence prevents the combatants from fighting close

enough to each other for a point to enter very deep. With pistols he would seriously risk his life; but, on the

other hand, he might come out of the affair with flying colors, and without a duel, after all.

The sound of his own voice startled him, and he looked nervously round the room. He felt unstrung. He drank

"I have all day tomorrow," he reflected, "for setting my affairs in order. I must sleep now, in order to be

He was very warm in bed, but he could not succeed in losing consciousness. He tossed and turned, remained

for five minutes lying on his back, then changed to his left side, then rolled over to his right. He was thirsty

Why did his heart beat so uncontrollably at every wellknown sound in his room? When the clock was about

to strike, the prefatory grating of its spring made him start, and for several seconds he panted for breath, so

He began to reason with himself on the possibility of such a thing: "Could I by any chance be afraid?"

No, indeed; he could not be afraid, since he was resolved to proceed to the last extremity, since he was

irrevocably determined to fight without flinching. And yet he was so perturbed in mind and body that he

And this doubt, this fearful question, took possession of him. If an irresistible power, stronger than his own

will, were to quell his courage, what would happen? He would certainly go to the place appointed; his will

would force him that far. But supposing, when there, he were to tremble or faint? And he thought of his social

And he suddenly determined to get up and look at himself in the glass. He lighted his candle. When he saw

his face reflected in the mirror he scarcely recognized it. He seemed to see before him a man whom he did

He remained standing before the mirror. He put out his tongue, as if to examine the state of his health, and all

"At this time the day after tomorrow I may be dead. This person in front of me, this 'I' whom I see in the

glass, will perhaps be no more. What! Here I am, I look at myself, I feel myself to be aliveand yet in

twentyfour hours I may be lying on that bed, with closed eyes, dead, cold, inanimate."

He turned round, and could see himself distinctly lying on his back on the couch he had just quitted. He had

Then he became afraid of his bed, and to avoid seeing it went to his smokingroom. He mechanically took a

cigar, lighted it, and began walking back and forth. He was cold; he took a step toward the bell, to wake his

And, instead of ringing, he made a fire himself. His hands quivered nervously as they touched various

objects. His head grew dizzy, his thoughts confused, disjointed, painful; a numbness seized his spirit, as if he

His whole body trembled spasmodically; he rose, and, going to the window, drew back the curtains.

The daya summer daywas breaking. The pink sky cast a glow on the city, its roofs, and its walls. A flush

of light enveloped the awakened world, like a caress from the rising sun, and the glimmer of dawn kindled

new hope in the breast of the vicomte. What a fool he was to let himself succumb to fear before anything was

decidedbefore his seconds had interviewed those of Georges Lamil, before he even knew whether he

His seconds, the marquis and the colonel, placed themselves at his disposal, and, having shaken him warmly

"Twenty pacesat a given signalthe arm to be raised, not lowered shots to be exchanged until one or

"Excellent conditions," declared the colonel in a satisfied tone. "You are a good shot; all the chances are in

And they parted. The vicomte returned home to, wait for them. His agitation, only temporarily allayed, now

increased momentarily. He felt, in arms, legs and chest, a sort of tremblinga continuous vibration; he could

not stay still, either sitting or standing. His mouth was parched, and he made every now and then a clicking

He attempted, to take luncheon, but could not eat. Then it occurred to him to seek courage in drink, and he

sent for a decanter of rum, of which he swallowed, one after another, six small glasses.

A burning warmth, followed by a deadening of the mental faculties, ensued. He said to himself:

But at the end of an hour he had emptied the decanter, and his agitation was worse than ever. A mad longing

A ring at the bell so unnerved him that he had not the strength to rise to receive his seconds.

He dared not even to speak to them, wish them goodday, utter a single word, lest his changed voice should

"All is arranged as you wished," said the colonel. "Your adversary claimed at first the privilege of the

offended part; but he yielded almost at once, and accepted your conditions. His seconds are two military

"Please excuse us if we do not stay now, for we have a good deal to see to yet. We shall want a reliable

doctor, since the duel is not to end until a serious wound has been inflicted; and you know that bullets are not

to be trifled with. We must select a spot near some house to which the wounded party can be carried if

necessary. In fact, the arrangements will take us another two or three hours at least."

When he was once more alone he felt as though he should go mad. His servant having lighted the lamps, he

sat down at his table to write some letters. When he had traced at the top of a sheet of paper the words: "This

is my last will and testament," he started from his seat, feeling himself incapable of connected thought, of

So he was going to fight! He could no longer avoid it. What, then, possessed him? He wished to fight, he was

fully determined to fight, and yet, in spite of all his mental effort, in spite of the exertion of all his will power,

he felt that he could not even preserve the strength necessary to carry him through the ordeal. He tried to

Every now and then his teeth chattered audibly. He thought he would read, and took down Chateauvillard's

"Is the other man practiced in the use of the pistol? Is he well known? How can I find out?"

He remembered Baron de Vaux's book on marksmen, and searched it from end to end. Georges Lamil was

not mentioned. And yet, if he were not an adept, would he have accepted without demur such a dangerous

He opened a case of Gastinne Renettes which stood on a small table, and took from it a pistol. Next he stood

in the correct attitude for firing, and raised his arm. But he was trembling from head to foot, and the weapon

He looked at the little black, deathspitting hole at the end of the pistol; he thought of dishonor, of the

whispers at the clubs, the smiles in his friends' drawingrooms, the contempt of women, the veiled sneers of

He still looked at the weapon, and raising the hammer, saw the glitter of the priming below it. The pistol had

been left loaded by some chance, some oversight. And the discovery rejoiced him, he knew not why.

If he did not maintain, in presence of his opponent, the steadfast bearing which was so necessary to his honor,

he would be ruined forever. He would be branded, stigmatized as a coward, hounded out of society! And he

felt, he knew, that he could not maintain that calm, unmoved demeanor. And yet he was brave, since the

thought that followed was not even rounded to a finish in his mind; but, opening his mouth wide, he suddenly

plunged the barrel of the pistol as far back as his throat, and pressed the trigger.

When the valet, alarmed at the report, rushed into the room he found his master lying dead upon his back. A

spurt of blood had splashed the white paper on the table, and had made a great crimson stain beneath the

In the office old Mongilet was considered a type. He was a good old employee, who had never been outside

It was the end of July, and each of us, every Sunday, went to roll in the grass, or soak in the water in the

country near by. Asnieres, Argenteuil, Chatou, Borgival, Maisons, Poissy, had their habitues and their ardent

admirers. We argued about the merits and advantages of all these places, celebrated and delightful to all

"Yes, indeed. I go in an omnibus. When I have had a good luncheon, without any hurry, at the wine shop

down there, I look up my route with a plan of Paris, and the time table of the lines and connections. And then

I climb up on the box, open my umbrella and off we go. Oh, I see lots of things, more than you, I bet! I

change my surroundings. It is as though I were taking a journey across the world, the people are so different

in one street and another. I know my Paris better than anyone. And then, there is nothing more amusing than

the entresols. You would not believe what one sees in there at a glance. One guesses at domestic scenes

simply at sight of the face of a man who is roaring; one is amused on passing by a barber's shop, to see the

barber leave his customer whose face is covered with lather to look out in the street. One exchanges heartfelt

glances with the milliners just for fun, as one has no time to alight. Ah, how many things one sees!

"It is the drama, the real, the true, the drama of nature, seen as the horses trot by. Heavens! I would not give

"I was there once," he replied, "twenty years ago, and you will never catch me there again."

"He was my office chum. The rascal had a house at Colombes and always invited me to spend Sunday with

"'Come along, Maculotte [he called me Maculotte for fun]. You will see what a nice excursion we will take.'

"I let myself be entrapped like an animal, and set out, one morning by the 8 o'clock train. I arrived at a kind

of town, a country town where there is nothing to see, and I at length found my way to an old wooden door

"I rang, and waited a long time, and at last the door was opened. What was it that opened it? I could not tell at

the first glance. A woman or an ape? The creature was old, ugly, covered with old clothes that looked dirty

and wicked. It had chicken's feathers in its hair and looked as though it would devour me.

"I felt ill at ease on being questioned by this fury. I stammered: 'Whyhe expects me.'

"It was my friend's wife. Little Boivin appeared immediately on the threshold of a sort of barrack of plaster

covered with zinc, that looked like a foot stove. He wore white duck trousers covered with stains and a dirty

"After shaking my hands warmly, he took me into what he called his garden. It was at the end of another

alleyway enclosed by high walls and was a little square the size of a pocket handkerchief, surrounded by

houses that were so high that the sun, could reach it only two or three hours in the day. Pansies, pinks,

wallflowers and a few rose bushes were languishing in this well without air, and hot as an oven from the

"'I have no trees,' said Boivin, 'but the neighbors' walls take their place. I have as much shade as in a wood.'

"'You can do me a service. You saw the wife. She is not agreeable, eh? Today, as I had invited you, she

gave me clean clothes; but if I spot them all is lost. I counted on you to water my plants.'

"I agreed. I took off my coat, rolled up my sleeves, and began to work the handle of a kind of pump that

wheezed, puffed and rattled like a consumptive as it emitted a thread of water like a Wallace drinking

fountain. It took me ten minutes to water it and I was in a bath of perspiration. Boivin directed me:

"The watering pot leaked and my feet got more water than the flowers. The bottoms of my trousers were

soaking and covered with mud. And twenty times running I kept it up, soaking my feet afresh each time, and

perspiring anew as I worked the handle of the pump. And when I was tired out and wanted to stop, Boivin, in

"To thank me he gave me a rose, a big rose, but hardly had it touched my buttonhole than it fell to pieces,

leaving only a hard little green knot as a decoration. I was surprised, but said nothing.

"We went toward the foot stove. If the garden was in the shade, the house, on the other hand, was in the

blazing sun, and the sweating room in the Turkish bath is not as hot as was my friend's dining room.

"Three plates at the side of which were some halfwashed forks, were placed on a table of yellow wood in

the middle of which stood an earthenware dish containing boiled beef and potatoes. We began to eat.

"A large water bottle full of water lightly colored with wine attracted my attention. Boivin, embarrassed, said

"'See here, my dear, just on a special occasion, are you not going to give us some plain wine?'

"'So that you may both get tipsy, is that it, and stay here gabbing all day? A fig for your special occasion!'

"He said no more. After the stew she brought in another dish of potatoes cooked with bacon. When this dish

"'Perhaps you have not had enough? Because you bring people here is no reason why we should devour all

"'Why, one does not know what may happen. It is always better to have some money.'

"'No, I will not give it to you! As the man has had luncheon here, the least he can do is to pay your expenses

"Boivin came back to fetch me. As I wished to be polite I bowed to the mistress of the house, stammering:

"'That's all right,' she replied. 'But do not bring him back drunk, for you will have to answer to me, you

"We set out. We had to cross a perfectly bare plain under the burning sun. I attempted to gather a flower

along the road and gave a cry of pain. It had hurt my hand frightfully. They call these plants nettles. And,

"We reached the river. Here there was an odor of mud and dirty water, and the sun blazed down on the water

so that it burned my eyes. I begged Boivin to go under cover somewhere. He took me into a kind of shanty

"I was hungry. I ordered an omelet. But to and behold, at the second glass of wine, that beggar, Boivin, lost

"He got up, declaimed, wanted to show his strength, interfered in a quarrel between two drunken men who

were fighting, and, but for the landlord, who came to the rescue, we should both have been killed.

"I dragged him away, holding him up until we reached the first bush where I deposited him. I lay down

beside him and, it seems, I fell asleep. We must certainly have slept a long time, for it was dark when I

awoke. Boivin was snoring at my side. I shook him; he rose but he was still drunk, though a little less so.

"We set out through the darkness across the plain. Boivin said he knew the way. He made me turn to the left,

then to the right, then to the left. We could see neither sky nor earth, and found ourselves lost in the midst of

a kind of forest of wooden stakes, that came as high as our noses. It was a vineyard and these were the

supports. There was not a single light on the horizon. We wandered about in this vineyard for about an hour

or two, hesitating, reaching out our arms without finding any limit, for we kept retracing our steps.

"At length Boivin fell against a stake that tore his cheek and he remained in a sitting posture on the ground,

uttering with all his might long and resounding hallos, while I screamed 'Help! Help!' as loud as I could,

lighting candlematches to show the way to our rescuers, and also to keep up my courage.

"At last a belated peasant heard us and put us on our right road. I took Boivin to his home, but as I was

leaving him on the threshold of his garden, the door opened suddenly and his wife appeared, a candle in her

"As soon as she saw her husband, whom she must have been waiting for since dark, she screamed, as she

"My, how I made my escape, running all the way to the station, and as I thought the fury was pursuing me I

Madame Julie Roubere was expecting her elder sister, Madame Henriette Letore, who had just returned from

The Letore household had left nearly five weeks before. Madame Henriette had allowed her husband to return

alone to their estate in Calvados, where some business required his attention, and had come to spend a few

days in Paris with her sister. Night came on. In the quiet parlor Madame Roubere was reading in the twilight

At last, she heard a ring at the door, and her sister appeared, wrapped in a travelling cloak. And without any

formal greeting, they clasped each other in an affectionate embrace, only desisting for a moment to give each

other another hug. Then they talked about their health, about their respective families, and a thousand other

things, gossiping, jerking out hurried, broken sentences as they followed each other about, while Madame

It was now quite dark. Madame Roubere rang for a lamp, and as soon as it was brought in, she scanned her

sister's face, and was on the point of embracing her once more. But she held back, scared and astonished at

On her temples Madame Letore had two large locks of white hair. All the rest of her hair was of a glossy,

ravenblack hue; but there alone, at each side of her head, ran, as it were, two silvery streams which were

immediately lost in the black mass surrounding them. She was, nevertheless, only twentyfour years old, and

Without moving, Madame Roubere gazed at her in amazement, tears rising to her eyes, as she thought that

But Madame Roubere impetuously seized her by the shoulders, and with a searching glance at her, repeated:

"What is the matter with you? Tell me what is the matter with you. And if you tell me a falsehood, I'll soon

They remained face to face, and Madame Henriette, who looked as if she were about to faint, had two pearly

Then, when she had grown a little calmer, when the heaving of her breast had subsided, she commenced to

unbosom herself, as if to cast forth this secret from herself, to empty this sorrow of hers into a sympathetic

Thereupon, holding each other's hands tightly clasped, the two women went over to a sofa in a dark corner of

the room, into which they sank, and the younger sister, passing her arm over the elder one's neck, and

"Oh! I know that there was no excuse for me; I do not understand myself, and since that day I feel as if I were

mad. Be careful, my child, about yourselfbe careful! If you only knew how weak we are, how quickly we

yield, and fall. It takes so little, so little, so little, a moment of tenderness, one of those sudden fits of

melancholy which come over you, one of those longings to open, your arms, to love, to cherish something,

"You know my husband, and you know how fond I am of him; but he is mature and sensible, and cannot even

comprehend the tender vibrations of a woman's heart. He is always the same, always good, always smiling,

always kind, always perfect. Oh! how I sometimes have wished that he would clasp me roughly in his arms,

that he would embrace me with those slow, sweet kisses which make two beings intermingle, which are like

mute confidences! How I have wished that he were foolish, even weak, so that he should have need of me, of

"This all seems very silly; but we women are made like that. How can we help it?

"And yet the thought of deceiving him never entered my mind. Now it has happened, without love, without

reason, without anything, simply because the moon shone one night on the Lake of Lucerne.

"During the month when we were travelling together, my husband, with his calm indifference, paralyzed my

enthusiasm, extinguished my poetic ardor. When we were descending the mountain paths at sunrise, when as

the four horses galloped along with the diligence, we saw, in the transparent morning haze, valleys, woods,

streams, and villages, I clasped my hands with delight, and said to him: 'How beautiful it is, dear! Give me a

kiss! Kiss me now!' He only answered, with a smile of chilling kindliness: 'There is no reason why we should

"And his words froze me to the heart. It seems to me that when people love each other, they ought to feel

"In fact, I was brimming over with poetry which he kept me from expressing. I was almost like a boiler filled

"One evening (we had for four days been staying in a hotel at Fluelen) Robert, having one of his sick

headaches, went to bed immediately after dinner, and I went to take a walk all alone along the edge of the

"It was a night such as one reads of in fairy tales. The full moon showed itself in the middle of the sky; the

tall mountains, with their snowy crests, seemed to wear silver crowns; the waters of the lake glittered with

tiny shining ripples. The air was mild, with that kind of penetrating warmth which enervates us till we are

ready to faint, to be deeply affected without any apparent cause. But how sensitive, how vibrating the heart is

"I sat down on the grass, and gazed at that vast, melancholy, and fascinating lake, and a strange feeling arose

in me; I was seized with an insatiable need of love, a revolt against the gloomy dullness of my life. What!

would it never be my fate to wander, arm in arm, with a man I loved, along a moonkissed bank like this?

Was I never to feel on my lips those kisses so deep, delicious, and intoxicating which lovers exchange on

nights that seem to have been made by God for tenderness? Was I never to know ardent, feverish love in the

"And I burst out weeping like a crazy woman. I heard something stirring behind me. A man stood there,

gazing at me. When I turned my head round, he recognized me, and, advancing, said:

"It was a young barrister who was travelling with his mother, and whom we had often met. His eyes had

"I was so confused that I did not know what answer to give or what to think of the situation. I told him I felt

"He walked on by my side in a natural and respectful manner, and began talking to me about what we had

seen during our trip. All that I had felt he translated into words; everything that made me thrill he understood

perfectly, better than I did myself. And all of a sudden he repeated some verses of Alfred de Musset. I felt

myself choking, seized with indescribable emotion. It seemed to me that the mountains themselves, the lake,

"And it happened, I don't know how, I don't know why, in a sort of hallucination.

And, sinking into her sister's arms, Madame Letore broke into groans almost into shrieks.

"You see, sister, very often it is not a man that we love, but love itself. And your real lover that night was the

The long promenade of La Croisette winds in a curve along the edge of the blue water. Yonder, to the right,

Esterel juts out into the sea in the distance, obstructing the view and shutting out the horizon with its pretty

To the left, the isles of Sainte Marguerite and Saint Honorat, almost level with the water, display their

And all along the great gulf, all along the tall mountains that encircle Cannes, the white villa residences seem

to be sleeping in the sunlight. You can see them from a distance, the white houses, scattered from the top to

Those near the water have gates opening on the wide promenade which is washed by the quiet waves. The air

is soft and balmy. It is one of those warm winter days when there is scarcely a breath of cool air. Above the

walls of the gardens may be seen orange trees and lemon trees full of golden fruit. Ladies are walking slowly

across the sand of the avenue, followed by children rolling hoops, or chatting with gentlemen.

A young woman has just passed out through the door of her coquettish little house facing La Croisette. She

stops for a moment to gaze at the promenaders, smiles, and with an exhausted air makes her way toward an

empty bench facing the sea. Fatigued after having gone twenty paces, she sits down out of breath. Her pale

face seems that of a dead woman. She coughs, and raises to her lips her transparent fingers as if to stop those

She gazes at the sky full of sunshine and swallows, at the zigzag summits of the Esterel over yonder, and at

She knows, however, that she is going to die, that she will never see the springtime, that in a year, along the

same promenade, these same people who pass before her now will come again to breathe the warm air of this

charming spot, with their children a little bigger, with their hearts all filled with hopes, with tenderness, with

happiness, while at the bottom of an oak coffin, the poor flesh which is still left to her today will have

decomposed, leaving only her bones lying in the silk robe which she has selected for a shroud.

She will be no more. Everything in life will go on as before for others. For her, life will be over, over forever.

She will be no more. She smiles, and inhales as well as she can, with her diseased lungs, the perfumed air of

She recalls the past. She had been married, four years ago, to a Norman gentleman. He was a strong young

man, bearded, healthylooking, with wide shoulders, narrow mind, and joyous disposition.

They had been united through financial motives which she knew nothing about. She would willingly have

said No. She said Yes, with a movement of the head, in order not to thwart her father and mother. She was a

Her husband brought her home to his Norman chateau. It was a huge stone building surrounded by tall trees

of great age. A high clump of pine trees shut out the view in front. On the right, an opening in the trees

presented a view of the plain, which stretched out in an unbroken level as far as the distant, farmsteads. A

crossroad passed before the gate and led to the high road three kilometres away.

Oh! she recalls everything, her arrival, her first day in her new abode, and her isolated life afterward.

When she stepped out of the carriage, she glanced at the old building, and laughingly exclaimed:

That day they passed their time in embracing each other, and she did not find it too long. This lasted fully a

month. The days passed one after the other in insignificant yet absorbing occupations. She learned the value

and the importance of the little things of life. She knew that people can interest themselves in the price of

It was summer. She went to the fields to see the men harvesting. The brightness of the sunshine found an

The autumn came. Her husband went out shooting. He started in the morning with his two dogs Medor and

Mirza. She remained alone, without grieving, moreover, at Henry's absence. She was very fond of him, but

she did not miss him. When he returned home, her affection was especially bestowed on the dogs. She took

care of them every evening with a mother's tenderness, caressed them incessantly, gave them a thousand

He invariably told her all about his sport. He described the places where he found partridges, expressed his

astonishment at not having caught any hares in Joseph Ledentu's clever, or else appeared indignant at the

conduct of M. Lechapelier, of Havre, who always went along the edge of his property to shoot the game that

She replied: "Yes, indeed! it is not right," thinking of something else all the while.

The winter came, the Norman winter, cold and rainy. The endless floods of rain came down tin the slates of

the great gabled roof, rising like a knife blade toward the sky. The roads seemed like rivers of mud, the

country a plain of mud, and no sound could be heard save that of water falling; no movement could be seen

save the whirling flight of crows that settled down like a cloud on a field and then hurried off again.

About four o'clock, the army of dark, flying creatures came and perched in the tall beeches at the left of the

chateau, emitting deafening cries. During nearly an hour, they flew from tree top to tree top, seemed to be

fighting, croaked, and made a black disturbance in the gray branches. She gazed at them each evening with a

weight at her heart, so deeply was she impressed by the lugubrious melancholy of the darkness falling on the

Then she rang for the lamp, and drew near the fire. She burned heaps of wood without succeeding in warming

the spacious apartments reeking with humidity. She was cold all day long, everywhere, in the drawingroom,

at meals, in her own apartment. It seemed to her she was cold to the marrow of her bones. Her husband only

came in to dinner; he was always out shooting, or else he was superintending sowing the seed, tilling the soil,

He would come back jovial, and covered with mud, rubbing his hands as he exclaimed:

He was happy, in good health, without desires, thinking of nothing save this simple, healthy, and quiet life.

About December, when the snow had come, she suffered so much from the icycold air of the chateau which

seemed to have become chilled in passing through the centuries just as human beings become chilled with

"Look here, Henry! You ought to have a furnace put into the house; it would dry the walls. I assure you that I

At first he was stunned at this extravagant idea of introducing a furnace into his manorhouse. It would have

seemed more natural to him to have his dogs fed out of silver dishes. He gave a tremendous laugh from the

"I assure you, dear, I feel frozen; you don't feel it because you are always moving about; but all the same, I

"Pooh! you'll get used to it, and besides it is excellent for the health. You will only be all the better for it. We

are not Parisians, damn it! to live in hothouses. And, besides, the spring is quite near."

About the beginning of January, a great misfortune befell her. Her father and mother died in a carriage

accident. She came to Paris for the funeral. And her sorrow took entire possession of her mind for about six

The mildness of the beautiful summer days finally roused her, and she lived along in a state of sad languor

When the cold weather returned, she was brought face to face, for the first time, with the gloomy future.

What was she to do? Nothing. What was going to happen to her henceforth? Nothing. What expectation, what

hope, could revive her heart? None. A doctor who was consulted declared that she would never have

Sharper, more penetrating still than the year before, the cold made her suffer continually.

She stretched out her shivering hands to the big flames. The glaring fire burned her face; but icy whiffs

seemed to glide down her back and to penetrate between her skin and her underclothing. And she shivered

from head to foot. Innumerable draughts of air appeared to have taken up their abode in the apartment, living,

crafty currents of air as cruel as enemies. She encountered them at every moment; they blew on her

incessantly their perfidious and frozen hatred, now on her face, now on her hands, and now on her back.

Once more she spoke of a furnace; but her husband listened to her request as if she were asking for the moon.

The introduction of such an apparatus at Parville appeared to him as impossible as the discovery of the

Having been at Rouen on business one day, he brought back to his wife a dainty foot warmer made of copper,

which he laughingly called a "portable furnace"; and he considered that this would prevent her henceforth

Toward the end of December she understood that she could not always live like this, and she said timidly one

"Listen, dear! Are we, not going to spend a week or two in Paris before spring:"

"In Paris? In Paris? But what are we to do there? Ah! no by Jove! We are better off here. What odd ideas

"What is it you want to distract you? Theatres, evening parties, dinners in town? You knew, however, when

She saw a reproach in these words, and in the tone in which they were uttered. She relapsed into silence. She

In January the cold weather returned with violence. Then the snow covered the earth.

One evening, as she watched the great black cloud of crows dispersing among the trees, she began to weep, in

He was happy, quite happy, never having dreamed of another life or other pleasures. He had been born and

had grown up in this melancholy district. He felt contented in his own house, at ease in body and mind.

He did not understand that one might desire incidents, have a longing for changing pleasures; he did not

understand that it does not seem natural to certain beings to remain in the same place during the four seasons;

he seemed not to know that spring, summer, autumn, and winter have, for multitudes of persons, fresh

She could say nothing in reply, and she quickly dried her eyes. At last she murmured in a despairing tone:

"Ah! yes, still your idea of the furnace. But look here, deuce take it! you have not had one cold since you

Night came on. She went up to her room, for she had insisted on having a separate apartment. She went to

She would have to be ill, to cough before he could understand what she suffered!

And she was filled with indignation, the angry indignation of a weak, timid being.

She must cough. Then, perhaps, he would take pity on her. Well, she would cough; he should hear her

coughing; the doctor should be called in; he should see, her husband, he should see.

She got out of bed, her legs and her feet bare, and a childish idea made her smile:

"I want a furnace, and I must have it. I shall cough so much that he'll have to put one in the house."

And she sat down in a chair in her nightdress. She waited an hour, two hours. She shivered, but she did not

She noiselessly left her room, descended the stairs, and opened the gate into the garden.

The earth, covered with snows seemed dead. She abruptly thrust forward her bare foot, and plunged it into the

icy, fleecy snow. A sensation of cold, painful as a wound, mounted to her heart. However, she stretched out

She walked with quick steps, out of breath, gasping every time she plunged her foot into the snow.

She touched the first pine tree with her hand, as if to assure herself that she had carried out her plan to the

end; then she went back into the house. She thought two or three times that she was going to fall, so numbed

and weak did she feel. Before going in, however, she sat down in that icy fleece, and even took up several

Then she went in and got into bed. It seemed to her at the end of an hour that she had a swarm of ants in her

throat, and that other ants were running all over her limbs. She slept, however.

She had inflammation of the lungs. She became delirious, and in her delirium she asked for a furnace. The

doctor insisted on having one put in. Henry yielded, but with visible annoyance.

She was incurable. Her lungs were seriously affected, and those about her feared for her life.

She was sent south. She came to Cannes, made the acquaintance of the sun, loved the sea, and breathed the

But she now lived with the fear of being cured, with the fear of the long winters of Normandy; and as soon as

she was better she opened her window by night and recalled the sweet shores of the Mediterranean.

She unfolds a newspaper which she has not already opened, and reads this heading:

She shivers and then smiles. She looks across at the Esterel, which is becoming rosy in the rays of the setting

sun. She looks at the vast blue sky, so blue, so very blue, and the vast blue sea, so very blue also, and she

And then she returned to the house with slow steps, only stopping to cough, for she had remained out too

She finds a letter from her husband. She opens it, still smiling, and she reads:

She ceases reading, quite happy at the thought that she had her furnace put in. Her right hand, which holds the

letter, falls slowly on her lap, while she raises her left hand to her mouth, as if to calm the obstinate cough

M. Patissot, born in Paris, after having failed in his examinations at the College Henri IV., like many others,

had entered the government service through the influence of one of his aunts, who kept a tobacco store where

He advanced very slowly, and would, perhaps, have died a fourthclass clerk without the aid of a kindly

Providence, which sometimes watches over our destiny. He is today fiftytwo years old, and it is only at this

age that he is beginning to explore, as a tourist, all that part of France which lies between the fortifications

The story of his advance might be useful to many employees, just as the tale of his excursions may be of

value to many Parisians who will take them as a model for their own outings, and will thus, through his

In 1854 he only enjoyed a salary of 1,800 francs. Through a peculiar trait of his character he was unpopular

with all his superiors, who let him languish in the eternal and hopeless expectation of the clerk's ideal, an

increase of salary. Nevertheless he worked; but he did not know how to make himself appreciated. He had

too much selfrespect, he claimed. His selfrespect consisted in never bowing to his superiors in a low and

servile manner, as did, according to him, certain of his colleagues, whom he would not mention. He added

that his frankness embarrassed many people, for, like all the rest, he protested against injustice and the

favoritism shown to persons entirely foreign to the bureaucracy. But his indignant voice never passed beyond

First as a government clerk, then as a Frenchman and finally as a man who believed in order he would adhere

to whatever government was established, having an unbounded reverence for authority, except for that of his

Each time that he got the chance he would place himself where he could see the emperor pass, in order to

have the honor of taking his hat off to him; and he would go away puffed up with pride at having bowed to

From his habit of observing the sovereign he did as many others do; he imitated the way he trimmed his

beard or arranged his hair, the cut of his clothes, his walk, his mannerisms. Indeed, how many men in each

country seemed to be the living images of the head of the government! Perhaps he vaguely resembled

Napoleon III., but his hair was black; therefore he dyed it, and then the likeness was complete; and when he

met another gentleman in the street also imitating the imperial countenance he was jealous and looked at him

disdainfully. This need of imitation soon became his hobby, and, having heard an usher at the Tuilleries

imitate the voice of the emperor, he also acquired the same intonations and studied slowness.

He thus became so much like his model that they might easily have been mistaken for each other, and certain

high dignitaries were heard to remark that they found it unseemly and even vulgar; the matter was mentioned

to the prime minister, who ordered that the employee should appear before him. But at the sight of him he

began to laugh and repeated two or three times: "That's funny, really funny!" This was repeated, and the

following day Patissot's immediate superior recommended that his subordinate receive an increase of salary

From that time on his promotions came regularly, thanks to his apelike faculty of imitation. The

presentiment that some high honor might come to him some day caused his chiefs to speak to him with

When the Republic was proclaimed it was a disaster for him. He felt lost, done for, and, losing his head, he

stopped dyeing his hair, shaved his face clean and had his hair cut short, thus acquiring a paternal and

Then his chiefs took revenge for the long time during which he had imposed upon them, and, having all

turned Republican through an instinct of self preservation, they cut down his salary and delayed his

promotion. He, too, changed his opinions. But the Republic not being a palpable and living person whom one

can resemble, and the presidents succeeding each other with rapidity, he found himself plunged in the

greatest embarrassment, in terrible distress, and, after an unsuccessful imitation of his last ideal, M. Thiers, he

felt a check put on all his attempts at imitation. He needed a new manifestation of his personality. He

searched for a long time; then, one morning, he arrived at the office wearing a new hat which had on the side

a small red, white and blue rosette. His colleagues were astounded; they laughed all that day, the next day, all

the week, all the month. But the seriousness of his demeanor at last disconcerted them, and once more his

superiors became anxious. What mystery could be hidden under this sign? Was it a simple manifestation of

patriotism, or an affirmation of his allegiance to the Republic, or perhaps the badge of some powerful

association? But to wear it so persistently he must surely have some powerful and hidden protection. It would

be well to be on one's guard, especially as he received all pleasantries with unruffled calmness. After that he

was treated with respect, and his sham courage saved him; he was appointed head clerk on the first of

January, 1880. His whole life had been spent indoors. He hated noise and bustle, and because of this love of

rest and quiet he had remained a bachelor. He spent his Sundays reading tales of adventure and ruling guide

lines which he afterward offered to his colleagues. In his whole existence he had only taken three vacations of

a week each, when he was changing his quarters. But sometimes, on a holiday, he would leave by an

excursion train for Dieppe or Havre in order to elevate his mind by the inspiring sight of the sea.

He was full of that common sense which borders on stupidity. For a long time he had been living quietly,

with economy, temperate through prudence, chaste by temperament, when suddenly he was assailed by a

terrible apprehension. One evening in the street he suddenly felt an attack of dizziness which made him fear a

stroke of apoplexy. He hastened to a physician and for five francs obtained the following prescription:

Patissot was greatly distressed, and for a whole month, in his office, he kept a wet towel wrapped around his

head like a turban while the water continually dripped on his work, which he would have to do over again.

Every once in a while he would read the prescription over, probably in the hope of finding some hidden

meaning, of penetrating into the secret thought of the physician, and also of discovering some forms of

Then he consulted his friends, showing them the fateful paper. One advised boxing. He immediately hunted

up an instructor, and, on the first day, he received a punch in the nose which immediately took away all his

ambition in this direction. Singlestick made him gasp for breath, and he grew so stiff from fencing that for

two days and two nights he could not get sleep. Then a bright idea struck him. It was to walk, every Sunday,

to some suburb of Paris and even to certain places in the capital which he did not know.

For a whole week his mind was occupied with thoughts of the equipment which you need for these

excursions; and on Sunday, the 30th of May, he began his preparations. After reading all the extraordinary

advertisements which poor, blind and halt beggars distribute on the street corners, he began to visit the stores

with the intention of looking about him only and of buying later on. First of all, he visited a socalled

American shoe store, where heavy travelling shoes were shown him. The clerk brought out a kind of ironclad

contrivance, studded with spikes like a harrow, which he claimed to be made from Rocky Mountain bison

skin. He was so carried away with them that he would willingly have bought two pair, but one was sufficient.

He carried them away under his arm, which soon be came numb from the weight. He next invested in a pair

of corduroy trousers, such as carpenters wear, and a pair of oiled canvas leggings. Then he needed a knapsack

for his provisions, a telescope so as to recognize villages perched on the slope of distant hills, and finally, a

government survey map to enable him to find his way about without asking the peasants toiling in the fields.

Lastly, in order more comfortably to stand the heat, he decided to purchase a light alpaca jacket offered by

the famous firm of Raminau, according to their advertisement, for the modest sum of six francs and fifty

centimes. He went to this store and was welcomed by a distinguishedlooking young man with a marvellous

head of hair, nails as pink as those of a lady and a pleasant smile. He showed him the garment. It did not

correspond with the glowing style of the advertisement. Then Patissot hesitatingly asked, "Well, monsieur,

will it wear well?" The young man turned his eyes away in wellfeigned embarrassment, like an honest man

who does not wish to deceive a customer, and, lowering his eyes, he said in a hesitating manner: "Dear me,

monsieur, you understand that for six francs fifty we cannot turn out an article like this for instance." And he

showed him a much finer jacket than the first one. Patissot examined it and asked the price. "Twelve francs

fifty." It was very tempting, but before deciding, he once more questioned the big young man, who was

observing him attentively. "Andis that good? Do you guarantee it?" "Oh! certainly, monsieur, it is quite

goad! But, of course, you must not get it wet! Yes, it's really quite good, but you understand that there are

goods and goods. It's excellent for the price. Twelve francs fifty, just think. Why, that's nothing at all.

Naturally a twentyfivefranc coat is much better. For twentyfive francs you get a superior quality, as

strong as linen, and which wears even better. If it gets wet a little ironing will fix it right up. The color never

fades, and it does not turn red in the sunlight. It is the warmest and lightest material out." He unfolded his

wares, holding them up, shaking them, crumpling and stretching them in order to show the excellent quality

of the cloth. He talked on convincingly, dispelling all hesitation by words and gesture. Patissot was

convinced; he bought the coat. The pleasant salesman, still talking, tied up the bundle and continued praising

the value of the purchase. When it was paid for he was suddenly silent. He bowed with a superior air, and,

holding the door open, he watched his customer disappear, both arms filled with bundles and vainly trying to

M. Patissot returned home and carefully studied the map. He wished to try on his shoes, which were more

like skates than shoes, owing to the spikes. He slipped and fell, promising himself to be more careful in the

future. Then he spread out all his purchases on a chair and looked at them for a long time. He went to sleep

with this thought: "Isn't it strange that I didn't think before of taking an excursion to the country?"

During the whole week Patissot worked without ambition. He was dreaming of the outing which he had

planned for the following Sunday, and he was seized by a sudden longing for the country, a desire of growing

tender over nature, this thirst for rustic scenes which overwhelms the Parisians in spring time.

Only one person gave him any attention; it was a silent old copying clerk named Boivin, nicknamed Boileau.

He himself lived in the country and had a little garden which he cultivated carefully; his needs were small,

and he was perfectly happy, so they said. Patissot was now able to understand his tastes and the similarity of

Then Patissot questioned him with deep interest. Boivin named all the fish who frolicked under this dirty

waterand Patissot thought he could see them. Boivin told about the different hooks, baits, spots and times

suitable for each kind. And Patissot felt himself more like a fisherman than Boivin himself. They decided that

the following Sunday they would meet for the opening of the season for the edification of Patissot, who was

The day before the one when he was, for the first time in his life, to throw a hook into a river, Monsieur

Patissot bought, for eighty centimes, "How to Become a Perfect Fisherman." In this work he learned many

useful things, but he was especially impressed by the style, and he retained the following passage:

"In a word, if you wish, without books, without rules, to fish successfully, to the left or to the right, up or

down stream, in the masterly manner that halts at no difficulty, then fish before, during and after a storm,

when the clouds break and the sky is streaked with lightning, when the earth shakes with the grumbling

thunder; it is then that, either through hunger or terror, all the fish forget their habits in a turbulent flight.

"In this confusion follow or neglect all favorable signs, and just go on fishing; you will march to victory!"

In order to catch fish of all sizes, he bought three wellperfected poles, made to be used as a cane in the city,

which, on the river, could be transformed into a fishing rod by a simple jerk. He bought some number fifteen

hooks for gudgeon, number twelve for bream, and with his number seven he expected to fill his basket with

carp. He bought no earth worms because he was sure of finding them everywhere; but he laid in a provision

of sand worms. He had a jar full of them, and in the evening he watched them with interest. The hideous

creatures swarmed in their bath of bran as they do in putrid meat. Patissot wished to practice baiting his hook.

He took up one with disgust, but he had hardly placed the curved steel point against it when it split open.

Twenty times he repeated this without success, and he might have continued all night had he not feared to

He left by the first train. The station was full of people equipped with fishing lines. Some, like Patissot's,

looked like simple bamboo canes; others, in one piece, pointed their slender ends to the skies. They looked

like a forest of slender sticks, which mingled and clashed like swords or swayed like masts over an ocean of

When the train started fishing rods could be seen sticking out of all the windows and doors, giving to the train

Everybody got off at Courbevoie and rushed for the stage for Bezons. A crowd of fishermen crowded on top

of the coach, holding their rods in their hands, giving the vehicle the appearance of a porcupine.

All along the road men were travelling in the same direction as though on a pilgrimage to an unknown

Jerusalem. They were carrying those long, slender sticks resembling those carried by the faithful returning

from Palestine. A tin box on a strap was fastened to their backs. They were in a hurry.

At Bezons the river appeared. People were lined along bath banks, men in frock coats, others in duck suits,

others in blouses, women, children and even young girls of marriageable age; all were fishing.

Patissot started for the dam where his friend Boivin was waiting for him. The latter greeted him rather coolly.

He had just made the acquaintance of a big, fat man of about fifty, who seemed very strong and whose skin

was tanned. All three hired a big boat and lay off almost under the fall of the dam, where the fish are most

Boivin was immediately ready. He baited his line and threw it out, and then sat motionless, watching the little

float with extraordinary concentration. From time to time he would jerk his line out of the water and cast it

farther out. The fat gentleman threw out his wellbaited hooks, put his line down beside him, filled his pipe,

lit it, crossed his arms, and, without another glance at the cork, he watched the water flow by. Patissot once

more began trying to stick sand worms on his hooks. After about five minutes of this occupation he called to

Boivin; "Monsieur Boivin, would you be so kind as to help me put these creatures on my hook? Try as I will,

I can't seem to succeed." Boivin raised his head: "Please don't disturb me, Monsieur Patissot; we are not here

for pleasure!" However, he baited the line, which Patissot then threw out, carefully imitating all the motions

The boat was tossing wildly, shaken by the waves, and spun round like a top by the current, although

anchored at both ends. Patissot, absorbed in the sport, felt a vague kind of uneasiness; he was uncomfortably

They caught nothing. Little Boivin, very nervous, was gesticulating and shaking his head in despair. Patissot

was as sad as though some disaster had overtaken him. The fat gentleman alone, still motionless, was quietly

smoking without paying any attention to his line. At last Patissot, disgusted, turned toward him and said in a

The fat man, still smoking like a factory chimney, let out the following words, which completely upset his

"It would bother me a lot if they did bite. I don't come here to fish; I come because I'm very comfortable here;

I get shaken up as though I were at sea. If I take a line along, it's only to do as others do."

Monsieur Patissot, on the other hand, did not feel at all well. His discomfort, at first vague, kept increasing,

and finally took on a definite form. He felt, indeed, as though he were being tossed by the sea, and he was

suffering from seasickness. After the first attack had calmed down, he proposed leaving, but Boivin grew so

furious that they almost came to blows. The fat man, moved by pity, rowed the boat back, and, as soon as

Patissot had recovered from his seasickness, they bethought themselves of luncheon.

Two restaurants presented themselves. One of them, very small, looked like a beer garden, and was

patronized by the poorer fishermen. The other one, which bore the imposing name of "Linden Cottage,"

looked like a middleclass residence and was frequented by the aristocracy of the rod. The two owners, born

enemies, watched each other with hatred across a large field, which separated them, and where the white

house of the dam keeper and of the inspector of the lifesaving department stood out against the green grass.

Moreover, these two officials disagreed, one of them upholding the beer garden and the other one defending

the Elms, and the internal feuds which arose in these three houses reproduced the whole history of mankind.

Boivin, who knew the beer garden, wished to go there, exclaiming: "The food is very good, and it isn't

expensive; you'll see. Anyhow, Monsieur Patissot, you needn't expect to get me tipsy the way you did last

The fat gentleman declared that he would only eat at the Elms, because it was an excellent place and the

"Do as you wish," declared Boivin ; "I am going where I am accustomed to go." He left. Patissot, displeased

They ate together, exchanged ideas, discussed opinions and found that they were made for each other.

After the meal everyone started to fish again, but the two new friends left together. Following along the

banks, they stopped near the railroad bridge and, still talking, they threw their lines in the water. The fish still

A family was approaching. The father, whose whiskers stamped him as a judge, was holding an

extraordinarily long rod; three boys of different sizes were carrying poles of different lengths, according to

age; and the mother, who was very stout, gracefully manoeuvred a charming rod with a ribbon tied to the

"Is this spot good, gentlemen?" Patissot was going to speak, when his friend answered: "Fine!" The whole

family smiled and settled down beside the fishermen. The Patissot was seized with a wild desire to catch a

fish, just one, any kind, any size, in order to win the consideration of these people; so he began to handle his

rod as he had seen Boivin do in the morning. He would let the cork follow the current to the end of the line,

jerk the hooks out of the water, make them describe a large circle in the air and throw them out again a little

higher up. He had even, as he thought, caught the knack of doing this movement gracefully. He had just

jerked his line out rapidly when he felt it caught in something behind him. He tugged, and a scream burst

from behind him. He perceived, caught on one of his hooks, and describing in the air a curve like a meteor, a

He turned around, bewildered, dropping his pole, which followed the hat down the stream, while the fat

gentleman, his new friend, lay on his back and roared with laughter. The lady, hatless and astounded, choked

with anger; her husband was outraged and demanded the price of the hat, and Patissot paid about three times

Patissot took another rod, and, until nightfall, he gave baths to sand worms. His neighbor was sleeping

Then Patissot withdrew his line, gave a cry and sat down hard from astonishment. At the end of the string

was a tiny little fish. When they looked at him more closely they found that he had been hooked through the

Patissot was filled with a boundless, triumphant joy; he wished to have the fish fried for himself alone.

During the dinner the friends grew still more intimate. He learned that the fat gentleman lived at Argenteuil

and had been sailing boats for thirty years without losing interest in the sport. He accepted to take luncheon

with him the following Sunday and to take a sail in his friend's clipper, Plongeon. He became so interested in

the conversation that he forgot all about his catch. He did not remember it until after the coffee, and he

demanded that it be brought him. It was alone in the middle of a platter, and looked like a yellow, twisted

match, But he ate it with pride and relish, and at night, on the omnibus, he told his neighbors that he had

Monsieur Patissot had promised his friend, the boating man, that he would spend the following Sunday with

him. An unforeseen occurrence changed his plan. One evening, on the boulevard, he met one of his cousins

whom he saw but very seldom. He was a pleasant journalist, well received in all classes of society, who

"Come on! Boating is an awful bore; there is no variety to it. Listen I'll take you along with me. I'll

"That's just where we'll go. On the way we'll call on Meissonier, at his place in Poissy; then we'll walk over

to Medan, where Zola lives. I have been commissioned to obtain his next novel for our newspaper."

Patissot, wild with joy, accepted the invitation. He even bought a new frock coat, as his own was too much

worn to make a good appearance. He was terribly afraid of saying something foolish either to the artist or to

the man of letters, as do people who speak of an art which they have never professed.

He mentioned his fears to his cousin, who laughed and answered: "Pshaw! Just pay them compliments,

nothing but compliments, always compliments; in that way, if you say anything foolish it will be overlooked.

"That's enough. Mention a painting from time to time, speak of a novel here and there and add:

'Superb! Extraordinary! Delightful technique! Wonderfully powerful!' In that way you can always get along. I

know that those two are very blase about everything, but admiration always pleases an artist."

Just a few steps from the station, at the end of the church square, they found Meissonier's property. After

passing through a low door, painted red, which led into a beautiful alley of vines, the journalist stopped and,

Patissot hesitated. At last he decided: "A little man, well groomed, clean shaven, a soldierly appearance." The

other smiled: "All right, come along." A quaint building in the form of a chalet appeared to the left; and to the

right side, almost opposite, was the main house. It was a strangelooking building, where there was a mixture

of everything, a mingling of Gothic fortress, manor, villa, hut, residence, cathedral, mosque, pyramid, a,

weird combination of Eastern and Western architecture. The style was complicated enough to set a classical

architect crazy, and yet there was something whimsical and pretty about it. It had been invented and built

They went in; a collection of trunks encumbered a little parlor. A little man appeared, dressed in a jumper.

The striking thing about him was his beard. He bowed to the journalist, and said: "My dear sir, I hope that

you will excuse me; I only returned yesterday, and everything is all upset here. Please be seated." The other

refused, excusing himself: "My dear master, I only dropped in to pay my respects while passing by." Patissot,

very much embarrassed, was bowing at every word of his friend's, as though moving automatically, and he

murmured, stammering: "What a sususuperb property!" The artist, flattered, smiled, and suggested

He led them first to a little pavilion of feudal aspect, where his former studio was. Then they crossed a parlor,

a diningroom, a vestibule full of beautiful works of art, of beautiful Beauvais, Gobelin and Flanders

tapestries. But the strange external luxury of ornamentation became, inside, a revel of immense stairways. A

magnificent grand stairway, a secret stairway in one tower, a servants' stairway in another, stairways

everywhere! Patissot, by chance, opened a door and stepped back astonished. It was a veritable temple, this

place of which respectable people only mention the name in English, an original and charming sanctuary in

exquisite taste, fitted up like a pagoda, and the decoration of which must certainly have caused a great effort.

They next visited the park, which was complex, varied, with winding paths and full of old trees. But the

journalist insisted on leaving; and, with many thanks, he took leave of the master: As they left they met a

gardener; Patissot asked him: "Has Monsieur Meissonier owned this place for a long time?" The man

answered: "Oh, monsieur! that needs explaining. I guess he bought the grounds in 1846. But, as for the

house! he has already torn down and rebuilt that five or six times. It must have cost him at least two

millions!" As Patissot left he was seized with an immense respect for this man, not on account of his success,

glory or talent, but for putting so much money into a whim, because the bourgeois deprive themselves of all

After crossing Poissy, they struck out on foot along the road to Medan. The road first followed the Seine,

which is dotted with charming islands at this place. Then they went up a hill and crossed the pretty village of

Villaines, went down a little; and finally reached the neighborhood inhabited by the author of the

A pretty old church with two towers appeared on the left. They walked along a short distance, and a passing

Before entering, they examined the house. A large building, square and new, very high, seemed, as in the

fable of the mountain and the mouse, to have given birth to a tiny little white house, which nestled near it.

This little house was the original dwelling, and had been built by the former owner. The tower had been

They rang the bell. An enormous dog, a cross between a Saint Bernard and a Newfoundland, began to howl

so terribly that Patissot felt a vague desire to retrace his steps. But a servant ran forward, calmed "Bertrand,"

opened the door, and took the journalist's card in order to carry it to his master.

"I hope that he will receive us!" murmured Patissot. "It would be too bad if we had come all this distance not

They entered the new building, and Patissot, who was quite enthusiastic, was panting as he climbed a

At the same time he was trying to picture to himself this man whose glorious name echoes at present in all

corners of the earth, amid the exasperated hatred of some, the real or feigned indignation of society, the

envious scorn of several of his colleagues, the respect of a mass of readers, and the frenzied admiration of a

great number. He expected to see a kind of bearded giant, of aweinspiring aspect, with a thundering voice

The door opened on a room of uncommonly large dimensions, broad and high, lighted by an enormous

window looking out over the valley. Old tapestries covered the walls; on the left, a monumental fireplace,

flanked by two stone men, could have burned a centuryold oak in one day. An immense table littered with

books, papers and magazines stood in the middle of this apartment so vast and grand that it first engrossed the

eye, and the attention was only afterward drawn to the man, stretched out when they entered on an Oriental

divan where twenty persons could have slept. He took a few steps toward them, bowed, motioned to two

seats, and turned back to his divan, where he sat with one leg drawn under him. A book lay open beside him,

and in his right hand he held an ivory paper cutter, the end of which he observed from time to time with one

While the journalist explained the purpose of the visit, and the writer listened to him without yet answering,

at times staring at him fixedly, Patissot, more and more embarrassed, was observing this celebrity.

Hardly forty, he was of medium height, fairly stout, and with a good natured look. His head (very similar to

those found in many Italian paintings of the sixteenth century), without being beautiful in the plastic sense of

the word, gave an impression of great strength of character, power and intelligence. Short hair stood up

straight on the high, welldeveloped forehead. A straight nose stopped short, as if cut off suddenly above the

upper lip which was covered with a black mustache; over the whole chin was a closelycropped beard. The

dark, often ironical look was piercing, one felt that behind it there was a mind always actively at work

observing people, interpreting words, analyzing gestures, uncovering the heart. This strong, round head was

appropriate to his name, quick and short, with the bounding resonance of the two vowels.

When the journalist had fully explained his proposition, the writer answered him that he did not wish to make

any definite arrangement, that he would, however, think the matter over, that his plans were not yet

sufficiently defined. Then he stopped. It was a dismissal, and the two men, a little confused, arose. A desire

seized Patissot ; he wished this wellknown person to say something to him, anything, some word which he

could repeat to his colleagues; and, growing bold, he stammered: "Oh, monsieur! If you knew how I

appreciate your works!" The other bowed, but answered nothing. Patissot became very bold and continued:

"It is a great honor for me to speak to you today." The writer once more bowed, but with a stiff and

impatient look. Patissot noticed it, and, completely losing his head, he added as he retreated: "What a susu

Then, in the heart of the man of letters, the landowner awoke, and, smiling, he opened the window to show

them the immense stretch of view. An endless horizon broadened out on all sides, giving a view of Triel,

PisseFontaine, Chanteloup, all the heights of Hautrie, and the Seine as far as the eye could see. The two

visitors, delighted, congratulated him, and the house was opened to them. They saw everything, down to the

dainty kitchen, whose walls and even ceilings were covered with porcelain tiles ornamented with blue

The novelist explained that, while looking for a cottage to hire for the summer, he had found the little house,

which was for sale for several thousand francs, a song, almost nothing. He immediately bought it.

The two men left. The journalist, taking Patissot by the arm, was philosophizing in a low voice:

"Every general has his Waterloo," he said; "every Balzac has his Jardies, and every artist living in the country

They took the train at the station of Villaines, and, on the way home, Patissot loudly mentioned the names of

the famous painter and of the great novelist as though they were his friends. He even allowed people to think

The celebration is approaching and preliminary quivers are already running through the streets, just as the

ripples disturb the water preparatory to a storm. The shops, draped with flags, display a variety of

gaycolored bunting materials, and the drygoods people deceive one about the three colors as grocers do

about the weight of candles. Little by little, hearts warm up to the matter; people speak about it in the street

"Have you heard the news? All the rulers are coming incognito, as bourgeois, in order to see it."

"I hear that the Emperor of Russia has arrived; he expects to go about everywhere with the Prince of Wales."

It is going to a celebration; what Monsieur Patissot, Parisian bourgeois, calls a celebration; one of these

nameless tumults which, for fifteen hours, roll from one end of the city to the other, every ugly specimen

togged out in its finest, a mob of perspiring bodies, where side by side are tossed about the stout gossip

bedecked in red, white and blue ribbons, grown fat behind her counter and panting from lack of breath, the

rickety clerk with his wife and brat in tow, the laborer carrying his youngster astride his neck, the bewildered

provincial with his foolish, dazed expression, the groom, barely shaved and still spreading the perfume of the

stable. And the foreigners dressed like monkeys, English women like giraffes, the watercarrier, cleaned up

for the occasion, and the innumerable phalanx of little bourgeois, inoffensive little people, amused at

everything. All this crowding and pressing, the sweat and dust, and the turmoil, all these eddies of human

flesh, trampling of corns beneath the feet of your neighbors, this city all topsyturvy, these vile odors, these

frantic efforts toward nothing, the breath of millions of people, all redolent of garlic, give to Monsieur

After reading the proclamation of the mayor on the walls of his district he had made his preparations.

Then Monsieur Patissot tried to imagine how he could give to his home an artistic appearance.

One serious obstacle stood in the way. His only window looked out on a courtyard, a narrow, dark shaft,

He needed a public opening. He found it. On the first floor of his house lived a rich man, a nobleman and a

royalist, whose coachman, also a reactionary, occupied a garretroom on the sixth floor, facing the street.

Monsieur Patissot supposed that by paying (every conscience can be bought) he could obtain the use of the

room for the day. He proposed five francs to this citizen of the whip for the use of his room from noon till

Then he began to busy himself with the decorations. Three flags, four lanterns, was that enough to give to this

box an artistic appearanceto express all the noble feelings of his soul? No; assuredly not! But,

notwithstanding diligent search and nightly meditation, Monsieur Patissot could think of nothing else. He

consulted his neighbors, who were surprised at the question; he questioned his colleaguesevery one had

bought lanterns and flags, some adding, for the occasion, red, white and blue bunting.

Then he began to rack his brains for some original idea. He frequented the cafes, questioning the patrons;

they lacked imagination. Then one morning he went out on top of an omnibus. A respectablelooking

gentleman was smoking a cigar beside him, a little farther away a laborer was smoking his pipe upside down,

near the driver two rough fellows were joking, and clerks of every description were going to business for

Before the stores stacks of flags were resplendent under the rising sun. Patissot turned to his neighbor.

"It is going to be a fine celebration," he said. The gentleman looked at him sideways and answered in a

"You are not going to take part in it?" asked the surprised clerk. The other shook his head disdainfully and

"They make me tired with their celebrations! Whose celebration is it? The government's? I do not recognize

But Patissot, as government employee, took on his superior manner, and answered in a stern voice:

His neighbor was not in the least disturbed, and, pushing his hands down in his pockets, he exclaimed:

"Well, and what then? It makes no difference to me. Whether it's for the Republic or something else, I don't

care! What I want, monsieur, is to know my government. I saw Charles X. and adhered to him, monsieur; I

saw LouisPhilippe and adhered to him, monsieur; I saw Napoleon and adhered to him; but I have never seen

"Excuse me, monsieur, he cannot be seen. I have personally tried more than a hundred times, monsieur. I

have posted myself near the Elysee; he did not come out. A passerby informed me that he was playing

billiards in the cafe opposite; I went to the cafe opposite; he was not there. I had been promised that he would

go to Melun for the convention; I went to Melun, I did not see him. At last I became weary. I did not even see

"A government, monsieur, is made to be seen; that's what it's there for, and for nothing else. One must be able

to know that on such and such a day at such an hour the government will pass through such and such a street.

"It is true," he said, "that it is agreeable to know the people by whom one is governed."

"Do you know how I would manage the celebration? Well, monsieur, I would have a procession of gilded

cars, like the chariots used at the crowning of kings; in them I would parade all the members of the

government, from the president to the deputies, throughout Paris all day long. In that manner, at least, every

A laugh ran round the two benches. Patissot understood the objection, and murmured:

"Then," he said, "I would place them in view some place, so that every one could see them without going out

of his way; on the Triumphal Arch at the Place de l'Etoile, for instance; and I would have the whole

"It's just like the presentation of the flags! There ought, to be some pretext, a mimic war ought to be

organized, and the banners would be awarded to the troops as a reward. I had an idea about which I wrote to

the minister; but he has not deigned to answer me. As the taking of the Bastille has been chosen for the date

of the national celebration, a reproduction of this event might be made; there would be a pasteboard Bastille,

fixed up by a scenepainter and concealing within its walls the whole Column of July. Then, monsieur, the

troop would attack. That would be a magnificent spectacle as well as a lesson, to see the army itself

overthrow the ramparts of tyranny. Then this Bastille would be set fire to and from the midst of the flames

would appear the Column with the genius of Liberty, symbol of a new order and of the freedom of the

This time every one was listening to him and finding his idea excellent. An old gentleman exclaimed:

"That is a great idea, monsieur, which does you honor. It is to be regretted that the government did not adopt

A young man declared that actors ought to recite the "Iambes" of Barbier through the streets in order to teach

These propositions excited general enthusiasm. Each one wished to have his word; all were wrought up.

From a passing handorgan a few strains of the Marseillaise were heard; the laborer started the song, and

everybody joined in, roaring the chorus. The exalted nature of the song and its wild rhythm fired the driver,

who lashed his horses to a gallop. Monsieur Patissot was bawling at the top of his lungs, and the passengers

At last they stopped, and Monsieur Patissot, judging his neighbor to be a man of initiative, consulted him

"Lanterns and flags are all right,"' said Patissot ; "but I prefer something better."

The other thought for a long time, but found nothing. Then, in despair, the clerk bought three flags and four

Many poets think that nature is incomplete without women, and hence, doubtless, come all the flowery

comparisons which, in their songs, make our natural companion in turn a rose, a violet, a tulip, or something

of that order. The need of tenderness which seizes us at dusk, when the evening mist begins to roll in from the

hills, and when all the perfumes of the earth intoxicate us, is but imperfectly satisfied by lyric invocations.

Monsieur Patissot, like all others, was seized with a wild desire for tenderness, for sweet kisses exchanged

along a path where sunshine steals in at times, for the pressure of a pair of small hands, for a supple waist

He began to look at love as an unbounded pleasure, and, in his hours of reverie, he thanked the Great

Unknown for having put so much charm into the caresses of human beings. But he needed a companion, and

he did not know where to find one. On the advice of a friend, he went to the FoliesBergere. There he saw a

complete assortment. He was greatly perplexed to choose between them, for the desires of his heart were

chiefly composed of poetic impulses, and poetry did not seem to be the strong point of these young ladies

with penciled eyebrows who smiled at him in such a disturbing manner, showing the enamel of their false

teeth. At last his choice fell on a young beginner who seemed poor and timid and whose sad look seemed to

He made an appointment with her for the following day at nine o'clock at the SaintLazare station. She did

She was a tall, redhaired girl, patriotically dressed in three colors, and covered by an immense tunnel hat, of

which her head occupied the centre. Monsieur Patissot, a little disappointed, nevertheless accepted this

substitute. They left for MaisonsLaffite, where regattas and a grand Venetian festival had been announced.

As soon as they were in the car, which was already occupied by two gentlemen who wore the red ribbon and

three ladies who must at least have been duchesses, they were so dignified, the big redhaired girl, who

answered the name of Octavie, announced to Patissot, in a screeching voice, that she was a fine girl fond of a

good time and loving the country because there she could pick flowers and eat fried fish. She laughed with a

shrillness which almost shattered the windows, familiarly calling her companion "My big darling."

Shame overwhelmed Patissot, who as a government employee, had to observe a certain amount of decorum.

But Octavie stopped talking, glancing at her neighbors, seized with the overpowering desire which haunts all

women of a certain class to make the acquaintance of respectable women. After about five minutes she

thought she had found an opening, and, drawing from her pocket a GilBlas, she politely offered it to one of

the amazed ladies, who declined, shaking her head. Then the big, redhaired girl began saying things with a

double meaning, speaking of women who are stuck up without being any better than the others; sometimes

she would let out a vulgar word which acted like a bomb exploding amid the icy dignity of the passengers.

At last they arrived. Patissot immediately wished to gain the shady nooks of the park, hoping that the

melancholy of the forest would quiet the ruffled temper of his companion. But an entirely different effect

resulted. As soon as she was amid the leaves and grass she began to sing at the top of her lungs snatches from

operas which had stuck in her frivolous mind, warbling and trilling, passing from "Robert le Diable" to the

"Muette," lingering especially on a sentimental lovesong, whose last verses she sang in a voice as piercing

Then suddenly she grew hungry. Patissot, who was still awaiting the hopedfor tenderness, tried in vain to

He had to take her to the PetitHavre restaurant, which was near the place where the regatta was to be held.

She ordered an endless luncheon, a succession of dishes substantial enough to feed a regiment. Then, unable

to wait, she called for relishes. A box of sardines was brought; she started in on it as though she intended to

swallow the box itself. But when she had eaten two or three of the little oily fish she declared that she was no

Patissot, in despair and in his turn seized with hunger, absolutely refused to move. She started off alone,

promising to return in time for the dessert. He began to eat in lonely silence, not knowing how to lead this

As she did not return he set out in search of her. She had found some friends, a troop of boatmen, in scanty

garb, sunburned to the tips of their ears, and gesticulating, who were loudly arranging the details of the race

Two respectablelooking gentlemen, probably the judges, were listening attentively. As soon as she saw

Patissot, Octavie, who was leaning on the tanned arm of a strapping fellow who probably had more muscle

Pleased to see her so charming, he gave in to this new whim and procured a boat. But she obstinately refused

An old dilapidated mill, whose wormeaten wheels hung over the water, stood with its two arches across a

little arm of the river. Slowly they passed beneath it, and, when they were on the other side, they noticed

before them a delightful little stretch of river, shaded by great trees which formed an arch over their heads.

The little stream flowed along, winding first to the right and then to the left, continually revealing new

scenes, broad fields on one side and on the other side a hill covered with cottages. They passed before a

bathing establishment almost entirely hidden by the foliage, a charming country spot where gentlemen in

clean gloves and beribboned ladies displayed all the ridiculous awkwardness of elegant people in the country.

She put her arm around his neck and, leaning her head on his shoulder, she murmured:

Patissot was reveling in happiness. He was thinking of those foolish boatmen who, without ever feeling the

penetrating charm of the river banks and the delicate grace of the reeds, row along out of breath, perspiring

and tired out, from the tavern where they take luncheon to the tavern where they take dinner.

He was so comfortable that he fell asleep. When he awoke, he was alone. He called, but no one answered.

Anxious, he climbed up on the side of the river, fearing that some accident might have happened.

Then, in the distance, coming in his direction, he saw a long, slender gig which four oarsmen as black as

negroes were driving through the water like an arrow. It came nearer, skimming over the water; a woman was

holding the tiller. Heavens! It lookedit was she! In order to regulate the rhythm of the stroke, she was

singing in her shrill voice a boating song, which she interrupted for a minute as she got in front of Patissot.

On the occasion of the national celebration Monsieur Antoine Perdrix, chief of Monsieur Patissot's

department, was made a knight of the Legion of Honor. He had been in service for thirty years under

preceding governments, and for ten years under the present one. His employees, although grumbling a little at

being thus rewarded in the person of their chief, thought it wise, nevertheless, to offer him a cross studded

with paste diamonds. The new knight, in turn, not wishing to be outdone, invited them all to dinner for the

The house, decorated with Moorish ornaments, looked like a cafe concert, but its location gave it value, as the

railroad cut through the whole garden, passing within a hundred and fifty feet of the porch. On the regulation

plot of grass stood a basin of Roman cement, containing goldfish and a stream of water the size of that which

comes from a syringe, which occasionally made microscopic rainbows at which the guests marvelled.

The feeding of this irrigator was the constant preoccupation of Monsieur Perdrix, who would sometimes get

up at five o'clock in the morning in order to fill the tank. Then, in his shirt sleeves, his big stomach almost

bursting from his trousers, he would pump wildly, so that on returning from the office he could have the

satisfaction of letting the fountain play and of imagining that it was cooling off the garden.

On the night of the official dinner all the guests, one after the other, went into ecstasies over the surroundings,

and each time they heard a train in the distance, Monsieur Perdrix would announce to them its destination:

SaintGermain, Le Havre, Cherbourg, or Dieppe, and they would playfully wave to the passengers leaning

The whole office force was there. First came Monsieur Capitaine, the assistant chief; Monsieur Patissot, chief

clerk; then Messieurs de Sombreterre and Vallin, elegant young employees who only came to the office when

they had to; lastly Monsieur Rade, known throughout the ministry for the absurd doctrines which he upheld,

Monsieur Rade passed for a character. Some called him a dreamer or an idealist, others a revolutionary; every

one agreed that he was very clumsy. Old, thin and small, with bright eyes and long, white hair, he had all his

life professed a profound contempt for administrative work. A book rummager and a great reader, with a

nature continually in revolt against everything, a seeker of truth and a despiser of popular prejudices, he had a

clear and paradoxical manner of expressing his opinions which closed the mouths of selfsatisfied fools and

of those that were discontented without knowing why. People said: "That old fool of a Rade," or else: "That

harebrained Rade"; and the slowness, of his promotion seemed to indicate the reason, according to

commonplace minds. His freedom of speech often madehis colleagues tremble; they asked themselves

with terror how he had been able to keep his place as long as he had. As soon as they had seated themselves,

Monsieur Perdrix thanked his "collaborators" in a neat little speech, promising them his protection, the more

valuable as his power grew, and he ended with a stirring peroration in which he thanked and glorified a

government so liberal and just that it knows how to seek out the worthy from among the humble.

Monsieur Capitaine, the assistant chief, answered in the name of the office, congratulated, greeted, exalted,

sang the praises of all; frantic applause greeted these two bits of eloquence. After that they settled down

Everything went well up to the dessert; lack of conversation went unnoticed. But after the coffee a discussion

arose, and Monsieur Rade let himself loose and soon began to overstep the bounds of discretion.

They naturally discussed love, and a breath of chivalry intoxicated this room full of bureaucrats; they praised

and exalted the superior beauty of woman, the delicacy of hex soul, her aptitude for exquisite things, the

correctness of her judgment, and the refinement of her sentiments. Monsieur Rade began to protest,

energetically refusing to credit the so called "fair" sex with all the qualities they ascribed to it; then, amidst

"Schopenhauer, gentlemen, Schopenhauer, the great philosopher, revered by all Germany, says: 'Man's

intelligence must have been terribly deadened by love in order to call this sex with the small waist, narrow

shoulders, large hips and crooked legs, the fair sex. All its beauty lies in the instinct of love. Instead of calling

it the fair, it would have been better to call it the unaesthetic sex. Women have neither the appreciation nor

the knowledge of music, any more than they have of poetry or of the plastic arts; with them it is merely an

apelike imitation, pure pretence, affectation cultivated from their desire to please.'"

"And how about Rousseau, gentlemen? Here is his opinion: 'Women, as a rule, love no art, are skilled in

"And this is what Lord Byron said, who, nevertheless, loved women: 'They should be well fed and well

dressed, but not allowed to mingle with society. They should also be taught religion, but they should ignore

poetry and politics, only being allowed to read religious works or cook books.'"

"You see, gentlemen, all of them study painting and music. But not a single one of them has ever painted a

remarkable picture or composed a great opera! Why, gentlemen? Because they are the 'sexes sequior', the

secondary sex in every sense of the word, made to be kept apart, in the background."

"She is the one exception, monsieur, the one exception. I will quote to you another passage from another

great philosopher, this one an Englishman, Herbert Spencer. Here is what he says: 'Each sex is capable, under

the influence of abnormal stimulation, of manifesting faculties ordinarily reserved for the other one. Thus, for

instance, in extreme cases a special excitement may cause the breasts of men to give milk; children deprived

of their mothers have often thus been saved in time of famine. Nevertheless, we do not place this faculty of

giving milk among the male attributes. It is the same with female intelligence, which, in certain cases, will

give superior products, but which is not to be considered in an estimate of the feminine nature as a social

"Do you admit with me that war is a barbarous thing; that this custom of killing off people constitutes a

condition of savagery; that it is odious, when life is the only real good, to see governments, whose duty is to

protect the lives of their subjects, persistently looking for means of destruction? Am I not right? Well, if war

is a terrible thing, what about patriotism, which is the idea at the base of it? When a murderer kills he has a

fixed idea; it is to steal. When a good man sticks his bayonet through another good man, father of a family,

"Just let me give you one example, gentlemen, one little example. What is your opinion of the gentlemen

with the silk caps who thrive along the boulevard's on the delightful traffic which you know, and who make a

"Well, gentlemen! only a century ago, when an elegant gentleman, very ticklish about his honor, had

forfrienda beautiful and rich lady, it was considered perfectly proper to live at her expense and even to

squander her whole fortune. This game was considered delightful. This only goes to show that the principles

"M. Rade, you are sapping the very foundations of society. One must always have principles. Thus, in

politics, here is M. de Sombreterre, who is a Legitimist; M. Vallin, an Orleanist; M. Patissot and myself,

Republicans; we all have very different principles, and yet we agree very well because we have them."

"To deliver up millions of men, superior minds, scientists, even geniuses, to the caprice and will of a being

who, in an instant of gaiety, madness, intoxication or love, would not hesitate to sacrifice everything for his

exalted fancy, would spend the wealth of the country amassed by others with difficulty, would have

thousands of men slaughtered on the battlefields, all this appears to mea simple logiciana monstrous

"But, admitting that a country must govern itself, to exclude, on some always debatable pretext, a part of the

citizens from the administration of affairs is such an injustice that it seems to me unworthy of a further

"There remains universal suffrage. I suppose that you will agree with me that geniuses are a rarity. Let us be

liberal and say that there are at present five in France. Now, let us add, perhaps, two hundred men with a

decided talent, one thousand others possessing various talents, and ten thousand superior intellects. This is a

staff of eleven thousand two hundred and five minds. After that you have the army of mediocrities followed

by the multitude of fools. As the mediocrities and the fools always form the immense majority, it is

"In order to be fair I admit that logically universal suffrage seems to me the only admissible principle, but it

"To make all the living forces of the country cooperate in the government, to represent all the interests, to

take into account all the rights, is an ideal dream, but hardly practicable, because the only force which can be

measured is that very one which should be neglected, the stupid strength of numbers, According to your

method, unintelligent numbers equal genius, knowledge, learning, wealth and industry. When you are able to

give to a member of the Institute ten thousand votes to a ragman's one, one hundred votes for a great

landowner as against his farmer's ten, then you will have approached an equilibrium of forces and obtained

a national representation which will really represent the strength of the nation. But I challenge you to do it.

"Formerly, when a man was a failure at every other profession he turned photographer; now he has himself

elected a deputy. A government thus composed will always be sadly lacking, incapable of evil as well as of

good. On the other hand, a despot, if he be stupid, can do a lot of harm, and, if he be intelligent (a thing which

"I cannot decide between these two forms of government; I declare myself to be an anarchist, that is to say, a

partisan of that power which is the most unassuming, the least felt, the most liberal, in the broadest sense of

the word, and revolutionary at the same time; by that I mean the everlasting enemy of this same power, which

Cries of indignation rose about the table, and all, whether Legitimist, Orleanist or Republican through force

of circumstances, grew red with anger. M. Patissot especially was choking with rage, and, turning toward M.

The anger felt by all the guests prevented M. Rade from continuing, and M. Perdrix, as chief, closed the

"Enough, gentlemen! We each have our opinion, and we have no intention of changing it."

All agreed with the wise words. But M. Rade, never satisfied, wished to have the last word.

"I have, however, one moral," said he. "It is simple and always applicable. One sentence embraces the whole

thought; here it is: 'Never do unto another that which you would not have him do unto you.' I defy you to pick

any flaw in it, while I will undertake to demolish your most sacred principles with three arguments."

This time there was no answer. But as they were going home at night, by couples, each one was saying to his

companion: "Really, M. Rade goes much too far. His mind must surely be unbalanced. He ought to be

How many recollections of youth come to me in the soft sunlight of early spring! It was an age when all was

pleasant, cheerful, charming, intoxicating. How exquisite are the remembrances of those old springtimes!

Do you recall, old friends and brothers, those happy years when life was nothing but a triumph and an

occasion for mirth? Do you recall the days of wanderings around Paris, our jolly poverty, our walks in the

fresh, green woods, our drinks in the wineshops on the banks of the Seine and our commonplace and

I will tell you about one of these. It was twelve years ago and already appears to me so old, so old that it

seems now as if it belonged to the other end of life, before middle age, this dreadful middle age from which I

I was then twentyfive. I had just come to Paris. I was in a government office, and Sundays were to me like

unusual festivals, full of exuberant happiness, although nothing remarkable occurred.

Now it is Sunday every day, but I regret the time when I had only one Sunday in the week. How enjoyable it

On this particular morning I awoke with that sense of freedom that all clerks know so wellthe sense of

I opened my window. The weather was charming. A blue sky full of sunlight and swallows spread above the

I dressed quickly and set out, intending to spend the day in the woods breathing the air of the green trees, for

Paris was astir and happy in the warmth and the light. The front of the houses was bathed in sunlight, the

janitress' canaries were singing in their cages and there was an air of gaiety in the streets, in the faces of the

inhabitants, lighting them up with a smile as if all beings and all things experienced a secret satisfaction at the

I walked towards the Seine to take the Swallow, which would land me at SaintCloud.

It seemed to me that I was about to set out for the ends of the world, for new and wonderful lands. I saw the

boat approaching yonder, yonder under the second bridge, looking quite small with its plume of smoke, then

growing larger and ever larger, as it drew near, until it looked to me like a mail steamer.

It came up to the wharf and I went on board. People were there already in their Sunday clothes, startling

toilettes, gaudy ribbons and bright scarlet designs. I took up a position in the bows, standing up and looking

at the quays, the trees, the houses and the bridges disappearing behind us. And suddenly I perceived the great

viaduct of Point du Jour which blocked the river. It was the end of Paris, the beginning of the country, and

behind the double row of arches the Seine, suddenly spreading out as though it had regained space and

liberty, became all at once the peaceful river which flows through the plains, alongside the wooded hills,

After passing between two islands the Swallow went round a curved verdant slope dotted with white houses.

A voice called out: "Bas Meudon" and a little further on, "Sevres," and still further, "SaintCloud."

I went on shore and walked hurriedly through the little town to the road leading to the wood.

I had brought with me a map of the environs of Paris, so that I might not lose my way amid the paths which

cross in every direction these little forests where Parisians take their outings.

As soon as I was unperceived I began to study my guide, which seemed to be perfectly clear. I was to turn to

the right, then to the left, then again to the left and I should reach Versailles by evening in time for dinner.

I walked slowly beneath the young leaves, drinking in the air, fragrant with the odor of young buds and sap. I

sauntered along, forgetful of musty papers, of the offices, of my chief, my colleagues, my documents, and

thinking of the good things that were sure to come to me, of all the veiled unknown contained in the future. A

thousand recollections of childhood came over me, awakened by these country odors, and I walked along,

permeated with the fragrant, living enchantment, the emotional enchantment of the woods warmed by the sun

At times I sat down to look at all sorts of little flowers growing on a bank, with the names of which I was

familiar. I recognized them all just as if they were the ones I had seen long ago in the country. They were

yellow, red, violet, delicate, dainty, perched on long stems or close to the ground. Insects of all colors and

shapes, short, long, of peculiar form, frightful, and microscopic monsters, climbed quietly up the stalks of

Then I went to sleep for some hours in a hollow and started off again, refreshed by my doze.

In front of me lay an enchanting pathway and through its somewhat scanty foliage the sun poured down drops

of light on the marguerites which grew there. It stretched out interminably, quiet and deserted, save for an

occasional big wasp, who would stop buzzing now and then to sip from a flower, and then continue his way.

All at once I perceived at the end of the path two persons, a man and a woman, coming towards me. Annoyed

at being disturbed in my quiet walk, I was about to dive into the thicket, when I thought I heard someone

calling me. The woman was, in fact, shaking her parasol, and the man, in his shirt sleeves, his coat over one

I went towards them. They were walking hurriedly, their faces very red, she with short, quick steps and he

"Can you tell me, monsieur, where we are? My fool of a husband made us lose our way, although he

"What, we are turning our back on Versailles? Why, that is just where we want to dine!"

"Mon Dieu, mon Dieu, mon Dieu!" she repeated, shrugging her shoulders, and in that tone of sovereign

As for him, he was perspiring and wiping his forehead. It was assuredly a little Parisian bourgeois couple.

"It was I!, Ah, it is my fault now! Was it I who wanted to go out without getting any information, pretending

that I knew how to find my way? Was it I who wanted to take the road to the right on top of the hill, insisting

She had not finished speaking when her husband, as if he had suddenly gone crazy, gave a piercing scream, a

long, wild cry that could not be described in any language, but which sounded like 'tuituit'.

"No, really, some people are so stupid and they pretend they know everything. Was it I who took the train to

Dieppe last year instead of the train to Havretell me, was it I? Was it I who bet that M. Letourneur lived in

She went on, furious, with a surprising flow of language, accumulating the most varied, the most unexpected

and the most overwhelming accusations drawn from the intimate relations of their daily life, reproaching her

husband for all his actions, all his ideas, all his habits, all his enterprises, all his efforts, for his life from the

"But, my dear, it is uselessbefore monsieur. We are making ourselves ridiculous. This does not interest

And he cast mournful glances into the thicket as though he sought to sound its peaceful and mysterious

depths, in order to flee thither, to escape and hide from all eyes, and from time to time he uttered a fresh

scream, a prolonged and shrill "tuituit." I took this to be a nervous affection.

The young woman, suddenly turning towards me: and changing her tone with singular rapidity, said:

"If monsieur will kindly allow us, we will accompany him on the road, so as not to lose our way again, and

I bowed. She took my arm and began to talk about a thousand things about herself, her life, her family, her

Her husband walked beside her, casting wild glances into the thick wood and screaming "tuituit" every few

"Yes. He was just a year old. He had never been outside the shop. I wanted to take him to have a run in the

woods. He had never seen the grass nor the leaves and he was almost wild. He began to run about and bark

and he disappeared in the wood. I must also add that he was greatly afraid of the train. That may have driven

him mad. I kept on calling him, but he has not come back. He will die of hunger in there."

"If you had left his chain on, it would not have happened. When people are as stupid as you are they do not

She stopped short, and looking into his eyes as if she were going to tear them out, she began again to cast in

It was growing dark. The cloud of vapor that covers the country at dusk was slowly rising and there was a

poetry in the air, induced by the peculiar and enchanting freshness of the atmosphere that one feels in the

"That was all that was lacking. How stupid you are! how stupid you are! Is it possible that I could have

married such an idiot! Well, go and look for it, and see that you find it. I am going on to Versailles with

He turned back and, stooping down as he searched the ground with anxious eyes, he moved away, screaming

We could see him for some time until the growing darkness concealed all but his outline, but we heard his

As for me, I stepped along quickly and happily in the soft twilight, with this little unknown woman leaning

on my arm. I tried to say pretty things to her, but could think of nothing. I remained silent, disturbed,

Our path was suddenly crossed by a high road. To the right I perceived a town lying in a valley.

"No, indeed. This is very funny and I am very hungry. I am really quite calm. My husband will find his way

We went into a restaurant beside the water and I ventured to ask for a private compartment. We had some

Eight hours of railway travel induce sleep for some persons and insomnia for others with me, any journey

At about five o'clock I arrived at the estate of Abelle, which belongs to my friends, the Murets d'Artus, to

spend three weeks there. It is a pretty house, built by one of their grandfathers in the style of the latter half of

the last century. Therefore it has that intimate character of dwellings that have always been inhabited,

furnished and enlivened by the same people. Nothing changes; nothing alters the soul of the dwelling, from

which the furniture has never been taken out, the tapestries never unnailed, thus becoming worn out, faded,

discolored, on the same walls. None of the old furniture leaves the place; only from time to time it is moved a

little to make room for a new piece, which enters there like a newborn infant in the midst of brothers and

The house is on a hill in the center of a park which slopes down to the river, where there is a little stone

bridge. Beyond the water the fields stretch out in the distance, and here one can see the cows wandering

around, pasturing on the moist grass; their eyes seem full of the dew, mist and freshness of the pasture. I love

this dwelling, just as one loves a thing which one ardently desires to possess. I return here every autumn with

After I had dined with this friendly family, by whom I was received like a relative, I asked my friend, Paul

An hour later, followed by her three children, two little girls and a boy, Madame Muret d'Artus installed me

When I was alone I examined the walls, the furniture, the general aspect of the room, in order to attune my

mind to it. I knew it but little, as I had entered it only once or twice, and I looked indifferently at a pastel

This old Aunt Rose, with her curls, looking at me from behind the glass, made very little impression on my

mind. She looked to me like a woman of former days, with principles and precepts as strong on the maxims

of morality as on cooking recipes, one of these old aunts who are the bugbear of gaiety and the stern and

I never had heard her spoken of; I knew nothing of her life or of her death. Did she belong to this century or

to the preceding one? Had she left this earth after a calm or a stormy existence? Had she given up to heaven

the pure soul of an old maid, the calm soul of a spouse, the tender one of a mother, or one moved by love?

What difference did it make? The name alone, "Aunt Rose," seemed ridiculous, common, ugly.

I picked up a candle and looked at her severe face, hanging far up in an old gilt frame. Then, as I found it

insignificant, disagreeable, even unsympathetic, I began to examine the furniture. It dated from the period of

Louis XVI, the Revolution and the Directorate. Not a chair, not a curtain had entered this room since then,

and it gave out the subtle odor of memories, which is the combined odor of wood, cloth, chairs, hangings,

I retired but did not sleep. After I had tossed about for an hour or two, I decided to get up and write some

I opened a little mahogany desk with brass trimmings, which was placed between the two windows, in hope

of finding some ink and paper; but all I found was a quillpen, very much worn, and chewed at the end. I was

about to close this piece of furniture, when a shining spot attracted my attention it looked like the yellow head

of a nail. I scratched it with my finger, and it seemed to move. I seized it between two fingernails, and

pulled as hard as I could. It came toward me gently. It was a long gold pin which had been slipped into a hole

Why? I immediately thought that it must have served to work some spring which hid a secret, and I looked. It

took a long time. After about two hours of investigation, I discovered another hole opposite the first one, but

at the bottom of a groove. Into this I stuck my pin: a little shelf sprang. toward my face, and I saw two

Yes, it pains me deeply. I wondered whether, perhaps you might not be feeling some regret! Not regret at

having loved me, for I know that you still do, but the regret of having expressed on white paper this living

love in hours when your heart did not confide in me, but in the pen that you held in your hand. When we

love, we have need of confession, need of talking or writing, and we either talk or write. Words fly away,

those sweet words made of music, air and tenderness, warm and light, which escape as soon as they are

uttered, which remain in the memory alone, but which one can neither see, touch nor kiss, as one can with the

Undoubtedly, you must have had an after thought of delicate shame at expressions that are ineffaceable. In

your sensitive and timid soul you must have regretted having written to a man that you loved him. You

remembered sentences that called up recollections, and you said to yourself: "I will make ashes of those

No, you have not understood me, you have not guessed. I do not regret, and I never shall, that I told you of

I will always write to you, but you must return my letters to me as soon as you have read them.

I shall shock you, my friend, when I tell you the reason for this demand. It is not poetic, as you imagined, but

practical. I am afraid, not of you, but of some mischance. I am guilty. I do not wish my fault to affect others

Understand me well. You and I may both die. You might fall off your horse, since you ride every day; you

might die from a sudden attack, from a duel, from heart disease, from a carriage accident, in a thousand ways.

For, if there is only one death, there are more ways of its reaching us than there are days or us to live.

Then your sisters, your brother, or your sisterinlaw might find my letters! Do you think that they love me?

I doubt it. And then, even if they adored me, is it possible for two women and one man to know a

I seem to be saying very disagreeable things, speaking first of your death, and then suspecting the

But don't all of us die sooner or later? And it is almost certain that one of us will precede the other under the

As for me, I will keep your letters beside mine, in the secret of my little desk. I will show them to you there,

sleeping side by side in their silken hiding place, full of our love, like lovers in a tomb.

You will say to me: "But if you should die first, my dear, your husband will find these letters."

Oh! I fear nothing. First of all, he does not know the secret of my desk, and then he will not look for it. And

Did you ever stop to think of all the love letters that have been found after death? I have been thinking of this

Think that never, do you understand, never, does a woman burn, tear or destroy the letters in which it is told

her that she is loved. That is our whole life, our whole hope, expectation and dream. These little papers which

bear our name in caressing terms are relics which we adore; they are chapels in which we are the saints. Our

love letters are our titles to beauty, grace, seduction, the intimate vanity of our womanhood; they are the

treasures of our heart. No, a woman does not destroy these secret and delicious archives of her life.

But, like everybody else, we die, and thenthen these letters are found! Who finds them? The husband.

Oh, I have thought a great deal about that! Just think that every day women are dying who have been loved;

every day the traces and proofs of their fault fall into the hands of their husbands, and that there is never a

Think, my dear, of what a man's heart is. He avenges himself on a living woman; he fights with the man who

has dishonored her, kills him while she lives, because, well, why? I do not know exactly why. But, if, after

her death, he finds similar proofs, he burns them and no one is the wiser, and he continues to shake hands

with the friend of the dead woman, and feels quite at ease that these letters should not have fallen into strange

Oh, how many men I know among my friends who must have burned such proofs, and who pretend to know

nothing, and yet who would have fought madly had they found them when she was still alive! But she is

Therefore, I can safely keep our letters, which, in your hands, would be a menace to both of us. Do you dare

I raised my eyes to the portrait of Aunt Rose, and as I looked at her severe, wrinkled face, I thought of all

those women's souls which we do not know, and which we suppose to be so different from what they really

are, whose inborn and ingenuous craftiness we never can penetrate, their quiet duplicity; and a verse of De

The oldfashioned chateau was built on a wooded knoll in the midst of tall trees with darkgreen foliage; the

park extended to a great distance, in one direction to the edge of the forest, in another to the distant country.

A few yards from the front of the house was a huge stone basin with marble ladies taking a bath; other, basins

were seen at intervals down to the foot of the slope, and a stream of water fell in cascades from one basin to

From the manor house, which preserved the grace of a superannuated coquette, down to the grottos incrusted

with shellwork, where slumbered the loves of a bygone age, everything in this antique demesne had retained

the physiognomy of former days. Everything seemed to speak still of ancient customs, of the manners of long

ago, of former gallantries, and of the elegant trivialities so dear to our grandmothers.

In a parlor in the style of Louis XV, whose walls were covered with shepherds paying court to shepherdesses,

beautiful ladies in hoopskirts, and gallant gentlemen in wigs, a very old woman, who seemed dead as soon

as she ceased to move, was almost lying down in a large easychair, at each side of which hung a thin,

Her dim eyes were gazing dreamily toward the distant horizon as if they sought to follow through the park the

visions of her youth. Through the open window every now and then came a breath of air laden with the odor

of grass and the perfume of flowers. It made her white locks flutter around her wrinkled forehead and old

Beside her, on a tapestried stool, a young girl, with long fair hair hanging in braids down her back, was

embroidering an altarcloth. There was a pensive expression in her eyes, and it was easy to see that she was

"Berthe, read me something out of the newspapers, that I may still know sometimes what is going on in the

"Yes, yes, darling. Are there no love stories? Is gallantry, then, dead in France, that they no longer talk about

And Berthe commenced. It was a case of vitriol throwing. A wife, in order to avenge herself on her husband's

mistress, had burned her face and eyes. She had left the Court of Assizes acquitted, declared to be innocent,

Berthe again made a search; and farther down among the reports of criminal cases, she read:

"'Gloomy Drama. A shop girl, no longer young, allowed herself to be led astray by a young man. Then, to

avenge herself on her lover, whose heart proved fickle, she shot him with a revolver. The unhappy man is

maimed for life. The jury, all men of moral character, condoning the illicit love of the murderess, honorably

This time the old grandmother appeared quite shocked, and, in a trembling voice, she said:

"Why, you people are mad nowadays. You are mad! The good God has given you love, the only enchantment

in life. Man has added to this gallantry the only distraction of our dull hours, and here you are mixing up with

it vitriol and revolvers, as if one were to put mud into a flagon of Spanish wine."

"But, grandmamma, this woman avenged herself. Remember she was married, and her husband deceived

The grandmother's heart, which had its birth in the great age of gallantry, gave a sudden leap.

"It is love that is sacred," she said. "Listen, child, to an old woman who has seen three generations, and who

has had a long, long experience of men and women. Marriage and love have nothing in common. We marry

to found a family, and we form families in order to constitute society. Society cannot dispense with marriage.

If society is a chain, each family is a link in that chain. In order to weld those links, we always seek metals of

the same order. When we marry, we must bring together suitable conditions; we must combine fortunes, unite

similar races and aim at the common interest, which is riches and children. We marry only once my child,

because the world requires us to do so, but we may love twenty times in one lifetime because nature has made

us like this. Marriage, you see, is law, and love is an instinct which impels us, sometimes along a straight, and

sometimes along a devious path. The world has made laws to combat our instinctsit was necessary to make

them; but our instincts are always stronger, and we ought not to resist them too much, because they come

from God; while the laws only come from men. If we did not perfume life with love, as much love as

possible, darling, as we put sugar into drugs for children, nobody would care to take it just as it is."

The grandmother raised her trembling hands toward Heaven, as if again to invoke the defunct god of

"You have become a race of serfs, a race of common people. Since the Revolution, it is impossible any longer

to recognize society. You have attached big words to every action, and wearisome duties to every corner of

existence; you believe in equality and eternal passion. People have written poetry telling you that people have

died of love. In my time poetry was written to teach men to love every woman. And we! when we liked a

gentleman, my child, we sent him a page. And when a fresh caprice came into our hearts, we were not slow in

The old woman smiled a keen smile, and a gleam of roguery twinkled in her gray eye, the intellectual,

skeptical roguery of those people who did not believe that they were made of the same clay as the rest, and

The grandmother ceased to smile. If she had kept in her soul some of Voltaire's irony, she had also a little of

Jean Jacques's glowing philosophy: "No honor! because we loved, and dared to say so, and even boasted of

it? But, my child, if one of us, among the greatest ladies in France, had lived without a lover, she would have

had the entire court laughing at her. Those who wished to live differently had only to enter a convent. And

you imagine, perhaps, that your husbands will love but you alone, all their lives. As if, indeed, this could be

the case. I tell you that marriage is a thing necessary in order that society should exist, but it is not in the

nature of our race, do you understand? There is only one good thing in life, and that is love. And how you

misunderstand it! how you spoil it! You treat it as something solemn like a sacrament, or something to be

And, on her knees, with tears in her eyes, she prayed to Heaven to bestow on her a great passion, one sole,

eternal passion in accordance with the dream of modern poets, while the grandmother, kissing her on the

forehead, quite imbued still with that charming, healthy reason with which gallant philosophers tinctured the

"Take care, my poor darling! If you believe in such folly as that, you will be very unhappy."

They had been great friends all winter in Paris. As is always the case, they had lost sight of each other after

leaving school, and had met again when they were old and grayhaired. One of them had married, but the

M. de Meroul lived for six months in Paris and for six months in his little chateau at Tourbeville. Having

married the daughter of a neighboring, squire, he had lived a good and peaceful life in the indolence of a man

who has nothing to do. Of a calm and quiet disposition, and not overintelligent he used to spend his time

quietly regretting the past, grieving over the customs and institutions of the day and continually repeating to

his wife, who would lift her eyes, and sometimes her hands, to heaven, as a sign of energetic assent: "Good

Madame de Meroul resembled her husband intellectually as though she had been his sister. She knew, by

And she loved and respected them from the bottom of her heart, without knowing them, with a poetic fervor,

with an hereditary devotion, with the tenderness of a wellborn woman. She was good to, the marrow of her

On meeting his old friend, Joseph Mouradour, at a ball, M. de Meroul was filled with a deep and simple joy,

After the first exclamations of surprise at the changes which time had wrought in their bodies and

Joseph Mouradour, who was from the south of France, had become a government official. His manner was

frank; he spoke rapidly and without restraint, giving his opinions without any tact. He was a Republican, one

of those good fellows who do not believe in standing on ceremony, and who exercise an almost brutal

He came to his friend's house and was immediately liked for his easy cordiality, in spite of his radical ideas.

Monsieur de Meroul would say to his friend in a serious and confidential tone of voice; "You have no idea

the harm that you are doing your country." He loved him all the same, for nothing is stronger than the ties of

childhood taken up again at a riper age. Joseph Mouradour bantered the wife and the husband, calling them

"my amiable snails," and sometimes he would solemnly declaim against people who were behind the times,

When he was once started on his democratic eloquence, the couple, somewhat ill at ease, would keep silent

from politeness and good breeding; then the husband would try to turn the conversation into some other

channel in order to avoid a clash. Joseph Mouradour was only seen in the intimacy of the family.

Summer came. The Merouls had no greater pleasure than to receive their friends at their country home at

Tourbeville. It was a good, healthy pleasure, the enjoyments of good people and of country proprietors. They

would meet their friends at the neighboring railroad station and would bring them back in their carriage,

always on the lookout for compliments on the country, on its natural features, on the condition of the roads,

on the cleanliness of the farmhouses, on the size of the cattle grazing in the fields, on everything within

They would call attention to the remarkable speed with which their horse trotted, surprising for an animal that

did heavy work part of the year behind a plow; and they would anxiously await the opinion of the newcomer

on their family domain, sensitive to the least word, and thankful for the slightest good intention.

Husband and wife had come to the train, delighted to welcome him to their home. As soon as he saw them,

Joseph Mouradour jumped from the train with a briskness which increased their satisfaction. He shook their

All the way home he was charming, remarking on the height of the trees, the goodness of the crops and the

When he stepped on the porch of the house, Monsieur de Meroul said, with a certain friendly solemnity:

"Thanks, my friend; I expected as much. Anyhow, I never stand on ceremony with my friends. That's how I

Then he went upstairs to dress as a farmer, he said, and he came back all togged out in blue linen, with a little

straw hat and yellow shoes, a regular Parisian dressed for an outing. He also seemed to become more vulgar,

more jovial, more familiar; having put on with his country clothes a free and easy manner which he judged

suitable to the surroundings. His new manners shocked Monsieur and Madame de Meroul a little, for they

always remained serious and dignified, even in the country, as though compelled by the two letters preceding

After lunch they all went out to visit the farms, and the Parisian astounded the respectful peasants by his tone

In the evening the priest came to dinner, an old, fat priest, accustomed to dining there on Sundays, but who

Joseph, on seeing him, made a wry face. Then he observed him with surprise, as though he were a creature of

some peculiar race, which he had never been able to observe at close quarters. During the meal he told some

rather free stories, allowable in the intimacy of the family, but which seemed to the Merouls a little out of

place in the presence of a minister of the Church. He did not say, "Monsieur l'abbe," but simply, "Monsieur."

He embarrassed the priest greatly by philosophical discussions about diverse superstitions current all over the

world. He said: "Your God, monsieur, is of those who should be respected, but also one of those who should

The Merouls, distressed, tried to turn the trend of the conversation. The priest left very early.

"Well, that's pretty good! As if I would be on my guard with a shaveling! And say, do me the pleasure of not

imposing him on me any more at meals. You can both make use of him as much as you wish, but don't serve

"Yes, I know; they have to be treated like 'rosieres.' But let them respect my convictions, and I will respect

As soon as Madame de Meroul entered the parlor, the next morning, she noticed in the middle of the table

three newspapers which made her start the Voltaire, the RepubliqueFrancaise and the Justice. Immediately

Joseph Mouradour, still in blue, appeared on the threshold, attentively reading the Intransigeant. He cried:

He read it aloud, emphasizing the parts which especially pleased him, so carried away by enthusiasm that he

did not notice his friend's entrance. Monsieur de Meroul was holding in his hand the Gaulois for himself, the

The fiery prose of the master writer who overthrew the empire, spouted with violence, sung in the southern

accent, rang throughout the peaceful parsons seemed to spatter the walls and centuryold furniture with a hail

The man and the woman, one standing, the other sitting, were listening with astonishment, so shocked that

In a burst of eloquence Mouradour finished the last paragraph, then exclaimed triumphantly:

Then, suddenly, he noticed the two sheets which his friend was carrying, and he, in turn, stood speechless

"Your papers! What are you doingmaking fun of me? You will do me the pleasure of reading mine; they

And before his astonished host could stop him, he had seized the two newspapers and thrown them out of the

window. Then he solemnly handed the Justice to Madame de Meroul, the Voltaire to her husband, while he

The couple, through delicacy, made a pretense of reading a little, they then handed him back the Republican

In truth, at the end of a week he ruled the house. He had closed the door against the priest, whom Madame de

Meroul had to visit secretly; he had forbidden the Gaulois and the Clarion to be brought into the house, so

that a servant had to go mysteriously to the postoffice to get them, and as soon as he entered they would be

hidden under sofa cushions; he arranged everything to suit himselfalways charming, always good

Other friends were expected, pious and conservative friends. The unhappy couple saw the impossibility of

having them there then, and, not knowing what to do, one evening they announced to Joseph Mouradour that

they would be obliged to absent themselves for a few days, on business, and they begged him to stay on

"Very well, I don't mind! I will wait here as long as you wish. I have already said that there should be no

formality between friends. You are perfectly rightgo ahead and attend to your business. It will not offend

me in the least; quite the contrary, it will make me feel much more completely one of the family. Go ahead,

How often we hear people say, "He is charming, that man, but he is a girl, a regular girl." They are alluding to

For we are all girllike men in Francethat is, fickle, fanciful, innocently treacherous, without consistency

But the most irritating of girlmen is assuredly the Parisian and the boulevardier, in whom the appearance

of intelligence is more marked and who combines in himself all the attractions and all the faults of those

charming creatures in an exaggerated degree in virtue of his masculine temperament.

Our Chamber of Deputies is full of girlmen. They form the greater number of the amiable opportunists

whom one might call "The Charmers." These are they who control by soft words and deceitful promises, who

know how to shake hands in such a manner as to win hearts, how to say "My dear friend" in a certain tactful

way to people he knows the least, to change his mind without suspecting it, to be carried away by each new

idea, to be sincere in their weathercock convictions, to let themselves be deceived as they deceive others, to

The newspapers are full of these effeminate men. That is probably where one finds the most, but it is also

where they are most needed. The Journal des Debats and the Gazette de France are exceptions.

Assuredly, every good journalist must be somewhat effeminatethat is, at the command of the public,

supple in following unconsciously the shades of public opinion, wavering and varying, sceptical and

credulous, wicked and devout, a braggart and a true man, enthusiastic and ironical, and always convinced

Foreigners, our antitypes, as Mme. Abel called them, the stubborn English and the heavy Germans, regard

us with a certain amazement mingled with contempt, and will continue to so regard us till the end of time.

They consider us frivolous. It is not that, it is that we are girls. And that is why people love us in spite of our

faults, why they come back to us despite the evil spoken of us; these are lovers' quarrels! The effeminate

man, as one meets him in this world, is so charming that he captivates you after five minutes' chat. His smile

seems made for you; one cannot believe that his voice does not assume specially tender intonations on their

account. When he leaves you it seems as if one had known him for twenty years. One is quite ready to lend

If he commits any breach of manners towards you, you cannot bear any malice, he is so pleasant when you

next meet him. If he asks your pardon you long to ask pardon of him. Does he tell lies? You cannot believe it.

Does he put you off indefinitely with promises that he does not keep? One lays as much store by his promises

When he admires anything he goes into such raptures that he convinces you. He once adored Victor Hugo,

whom he now treats as a back number. He would have fought for Zola, whom he has abandoned for Barbey

and d'Aurevilly. And when he admires, he permits no limitation, he would slap your face for a word. But

"Then you are angry with Julia?" "I slapped her face." "What had she done?" "She told Pauline that I had no

money thirteen months out of twelve, and Pauline told Gontranyou understand." "You were living together

in the Rue Clanzel?" "We lived together four years in the Rue Breda; we quarrelled about a pair of stockings

that she said I had worn it wasn't truesilk stockings that she had bought at Mother Martin's. Then I gave

her a pounding and she left me at once. I met her six months ago and she asked me to come and live with her,

One goes on one's way and hears no more. But on the following Sunday as one is on the way to Saint

Germain two young women get into the same railway carriage. One recognizes one of them at once; it is

The girlman has his friendships of this kind. For three months he cannot bear to leave his old Jack, his dear

Jack. There is no one but Jack in the world. He is the only one who has any intelligence, any sense, any

talent. He alone amounts to anything in Paris. One meets them everywhere together, they dine together, walk

about in company, and every evening walk home with each other back and forth without being able to part

"There is a drinker, a sorry fellow, a scoundrel for you. I know him well, you may be sure. And he is not even

But one morning one hears that they have fought a duel, then embraced each other, amid tears, on the

Just now they are the dearest friends in the world, furious with each other half the year, abusing and loving

each other by turns, squeezing each other's hands till they almost crush the bones, and ready to run each other

For the relations of these effeminate men are uncertain. Their temper is by fits and starts, their delight

unexpected, their affection turnabout face, their enthusiasm subject to eclipse. One day they love you, the

next day they will hardly look at you, for they have in fact a girl's nature, a girl's charm, a girl's temperament,

It is the dear little Toutou whom they hug, feed with sugar, allow to sleep on the pillow, but whom they

would be just as likely to throw out of a window in a moment of impatience, whom they turn round like a

sling, holding it by the tail, squeeze in their arms till they almost strangle it, and plunge, without any reason,

Then, what a strange thing it is when one of these beings falls in love with a real girl! He beats her, she

scratches him, they execrate each other, cannot bear the sight of each other and yet cannot part, linked

together by no one knows what mysterious psychic bonds. She deceives him, he knows it, sobs and forgives

her. He despises and adores her without seeing that she would be justified in despising him. They are both

atrociously unhappy and yet cannot separate. They cast invectives, reproaches and abominable accusations at

each other from morning till night, and when they have reached the climax and are vibrating with rage and

The girlman is brave and a coward at the same time. He has, more than another, the exalted sentiment of

honor, but is lacking in the sense of simple honesty, and, circumstances favoring him, would defalcate and

commit infamies which do not trouble his conscience, for he obeys without questioning the oscillations of his

To him it seems permissible and almost right to cheat a haberdasher. He considers it honorable not to pay his

debts, unless they are gambling debtsthat is, somewhat shady. He dupes people whenever the laws of

society admit of his doing so. When he is short of money he borrows in all ways, not always being scrupulous

as to tricking the lenders, but he would, with sincere indignation, run his sword through anyone who should

The humid gray sky seemed to weigh down on the vast brown plain. The odor of autumn, the sad odor of

bare, moist lands, of fallen leaves, of dead grass made the stagnant evening air more thick and heavy. The

peasants were still at work, scattered through the fields, waiting for the stroke of the Angelus to call them

back to the farmhouses, whose thatched roofs were visible here and there through the branches of the leafless

At the side of the road, on a heap of clothes, a very small boy seated with his legs apart was playing with a

potato, which he now and then let fall on his dress, whilst five women were bending down planting slips of

colza in the adjoining plain. With a slow, continuous movement, all along the mounds of earth which the

plough had just turned up, they drove in sharp wooden stakes and in the hole thus formed placed the plant,

already a little withered, which sank on one side; then they patted down the earth and went on with their

A man who was passing, with a whip in his hand, and wearing wooden shoes, stopped near the child, took it

up and kissed it. Then one of the women rose up and came across to him. She was a big, red haired girl, with

large hips, waist and shoulders, a tall Norman woman, with yellow hair in which there was a bloodred tint.

And they stared at each other. He held the child in his arms all the time. He kissed it once more and then put

In the distance, between two farmhouses, could be seen a plough drawn by a horse and driven by a man.

They moved on very gently, the horse, the plough and the laborer, in the dim evening twilight.

The young man pointed toward the child whom he had just put back on the ground, then with a glance he

"Faith, every one knows it wellthat it is Victor's. And what about it after all? I made a slip. Am I the only

woman that did? My mother also made a slip before me, and then yours did the same before she married your

dad! Who is it that hasn't made a slip in the country? I made a slip with Victor because he took advantage of

me while I was asleep in the barn, it's true, and afterward it happened between us when I wasn't asleep. I

certainly would have married him if he weren't a servant man. Am I a worse woman for that?"

"As for me, I like you just as you are, with or without the child. It's only my father that opposes me. All the

And he set forth with his heavy peasant's tread, while the girl, with her hands on her hips, turned round to

In fact, the man who thus went off, Cesaire Houlbreque, the son of deaf old Amable Houlbreque, wanted to

marry, in spite of his father, Celeste Levesque, who had a child by Victor Lecoq, a mere laborer on her

The hierarchy of caste, however, does not exist in the country, and if the laborer is thrifty, he becomes, by

So Cesaire Houlbieque went off, his whip under his arm, brooding over his own thoughts and lifting up one

after the other his heavy wooden shoes daubed with clay. Certainly he desired to marry Celeste Levesque. He

wanted her with her child because she was the wife he wanted. He could not say why, but he knew it, he was

sure of it. He had only to look at her to be convinced of it, to feel quite queer, quite stirred up, simply stupid

with happiness. He even found a pleasure in kissing the little boy, Victor's little boy, because he belonged to

And he gazed, without hate, at the distant outline of the man who was driving his plough along the horizon.

But old Amable did not want this marriage. He opposed it with the obstinacy of a deaf man, with a violent

"I'll take good care of you, daddy. I tell you she's a good girl and strong, too, and also thrifty."

And nothing could get the better of him, nothing could make him waver. One hope only was left to Cesaire.

Old Amable was afraid of the cure through the apprehension of death which he felt drawing nigh; he had not

much fear of God, nor of the Devil, nor of Hell, nor of Purgatory, of which he had no conception, but he

dreaded the priest, who represented to him burial, as one might fear the doctors through horror of diseases.

For the last tight days Celeste, who knew this weakness of the old man, had been urging Cesaire to go and

find the cure, but Cesaire always hesitated, because he had not much liking for the black robe, which

represented to him hands always stretched out for collections or for blessed bread.

However, he had made up his mind, and he proceeded toward the presbytery, thinking in what manner he

The Abbe Raffin, a lively little priest, thin and never shaved, was awaiting his dinnerhour while warming

The man remained standing, intimidated, holding his cap in one hand and his whip in the other.

Cesaire looked at the housekeeper, an old woman who dragged her feet while putting on the cover for her

Thereupon the Abbe Raffin carefully surveyed his peasant. He saw his confused countenance, his air of

constraint, his wandering eyes, and he gave orders to the housekeeper in these words:

The young fellow still hesitated, looked down at his wooden shoes, moved about his cap, then, all of a

In the peasant's mind every effort of religion consisted in loosening the purse strings, in emptying the pockets

of men in order to fill the heavenly coffer. It was a kind of huge commercial establishment, of which the

cures were the clerks; sly, crafty clerks, sharp as any one must be who does business for the good God at the

He knew full well that the priests rendered services, great services to the poorest, to the sick and dying, that

they assisted, consoled, counselled, sustained, but all this by means of money, in exchange for white pieces,

for beautiful glittering coins, with which they paid for sacraments and masses, advice and protection, pardon

of sins and indulgences, purgatory and paradise according to the yearly income and the generosity of the

The Abbe Raffin, who knew his man and who never lost his temper, burst out laughing.

"Well, yes, I'll tell your father my little story; but you, my lad, you'll come to church."

He held on lease a little farm, quite small, for they were not rich, his father and he. Alone with a female

servant, a little girl of fifteen, who made the soup, looked after the fowls, milked the cows and churned the

butter, they lived frugally, though Cesaire was a good cultivator. But they did not possess either sufficient

The old man no longer worked. Sad, like all deaf people, crippled with pains, bent double, twisted, he went

through the fields leaning on his stick, watching the animals and the men with a hard, distrustful eye.

Sometimes he sat down on the side of the road and remained there without moving for hours, vaguely

pondering over the things that had engrossed his whole life, the price of eggs, and corn, the sun and the rain

which spoil the crops or make them grow. And, worn out with rheumatism, his old limbs still drank in the

humidity of the soul, as they had drunk in for the past sixty years, the moisture of the walls of his low house

He came back at the close of the day, took his place at the end of the table in the kitchen and when the

earthen bowl containing the soup had been placed before him he placed round it his crooked fingers, which

seemed to have kept the round form of the bowl and, winter and summer, he warmed his hands, before

commencing to eat, so as to lose nothing, not even a particle of the heat that came from the fire, which costs a

great deal, neither one drop of soup into which fat and salt have to be put, nor one morsel of bread, which

Then he climbed up a ladder into a loft, where he had his strawbed, while his son slept below stairs at the

end of a kind of niche near the chimneypiece and the servant shut herself up in a kind of cellar, a black hole

Cesaire and his father scarcely ever talked to each other. From time to time only, when there was a question

of selling a crop or buying a calf, the young man would ask his father's advice, and, making a speaking

trumpet of his two hands, he would bawl out his views into his ear, and old Amable either approved of them

or opposed them in a slow, hollow voice that came from the depths of his stomach.

So one evening Cesaire, approaching him as if about to discuss the purchase of a horse or a heifer,

communicated to him at the top of his voice his intention to marry Celeste Levesque.

Then the father got angry. Why? On the score of morality? No, certainly. The virtue of a girl is of slight

importance in the country. But his avarice, his deep, fierce instinct for saving, revolted at the idea that his son

should bring up a child which he had not begotten himself. He had thought suddenly, in one second, of the

soup the little fellow would swallow before becoming useful on the farm. He had calculated all the pounds of

bread, all the pints of cider that this brat would consume up to his fourteenth year, and a mad anger broke

Thereupon Cesaire began to enumerate his reasons, to speak about Celeste's good qualities, to prove that she

would be worth a thousand times what the child would cost. But the old man doubted these advantages, while

he could have no doubts as to the child's existence; and he replied with emphatic repetition, without giving

"I will not have it! I will not have it! As long as I live, this won't be done!" And at this point they had

remained for the last three months without one or the other giving in, resuming at least once a week the same

discussion, with the same arguments, the same words, the same gestures and the same fruitlessness.

It was then that Celeste had advised Cesaire to go and ask for the cure's assistance.

On arriving home the peasant found his father already seated at table, for he came late through his visit to the

They dined in silence, face to face, ate a little bread and butter after the soup and drank a glass of cider. Then

they remained motionless in their chairs, with scarcely a glimmer of light, the little servant girl having carried

off the candle in order to wash the spoons, wipe the glasses and cut the crusts of bread to be ready for next

There was a knock, at the door, which was immediately opened, and the priest appeared. The old man raised

toward him an anxious eye full of suspicion, and, foreseeing danger, he was getting ready to climb up his

ladder when the Abbe Raffin laid his hand on his shoulder and shouted close to his temple:

Cesaire had disappeared, taking advantage of the door being open. He did not want to listen, for he was afraid

and did not want his hopes to crumble slowly with each obstinate refusal of his father. He preferred to learn

the truth at once, good or bad, later on; and he went out into the night. It was a moonless, starless night, one

of those misty nights when the air seems thick with humidity. A vague odor of apples floated through the

farmyard, for it was the season when the earliest applies were gathered, the "early ripe," as they are called in

the cider country. As Cesaire passed along by the cattlesheds the warm smell of living beasts asleep on

manure was exhaled through the narrow windows, and he heard the stamping of the horses, who were

standing at the end of the stable, and the sound of their jaws tearing and munching the hay on the racks.

He went straight ahead, thinking about Celeste. In this simple nature, whose ideas were scarcely more than

images generated directly by objects, thoughts of love only formulated themselves by calling up before the

mind the picture of a big redhaired girl standing in a hollow road and laughing, with her hands on her hips.

It was thus he saw her on the day when he first took a fancy for her. He had, however, known her from

infancy, but never had he been so struck by her as on that morning. They had stopped to talk for a few

"Faith, she's a fine girl, all the same. 'Tis a pity she made a slip with Victor."

When he saw her again he felt something tickling the end of his throat, as if a cock's feather had been driven

through his mouth into his chest, and since then, every time he found himself near her, he was astonished at

In three months he made up his mind to marry her, so much did she please him. He could not have said

"I am possessed by her," as if the desire for this girl within him were as dominating as one of the powers of

hell. He scarcely bothered himself about her transgression. It was a pity, but, after all, it did her no harm, and

But if the cure should not succeed, what was he to do? He did not dare to think of it, the anxiety was such a

He reached the presbytery and seated himself near the little gateway to wait for the priest's return.

He was there perhaps half an hour when he heard steps on the road, and although the night was very dark, he

He rose up, his legs giving way under him, not even venturing to speak, not daring to ask a question.

"Why, yes. Come and look me up tomorrow at midday in order to settle about the publication of the banns."

The young man seized the cure's hand. He pressed it, shook it, bruised it as he stammered:

"Truetruetrue, Monsieur le Cure, on the word of an honest man, you'll see me tomorrowat your

The wedding took place in the middle of December. It was simple, the bridal pair not being rich. Cesaire,

attired in new clothes, was ready since eight o'clock in the morning to go and fetch his betrothed and bring

her to the mayor's office, but it was too early. He seated himself before the kitchen table and waited for the

For the last eight days it had been snowing, and the brown earth, the earth already fertilized by the autumn

It was cold in the thatched houses adorned with white caps, and the round apples in the trees of the enclosures

seemed to be flowering, covered with white as they had been in the pleasant month of their blossoming.

This day the big clouds to the north, the big great snow clouds, had disappeared and the blue sky showed

Cesaire looked straight before him through the window, thinking of nothing, quite happy.

The door opened, two women entered, peasant women in their Sunday clothes, the aunt and the cousin of the

bridegroom; then three men, his cousins; then a woman who was a neighbor. They sat down on chairs and

remained, motionless and silent, the women on one side of the kitchen, the men on the other, suddenly seized

with timidity, with that embarrassed sadness which takes possession of people assembled for a ceremony.

Those rose up. Then Cesaire, whom a feeling of uneasiness had taken possession of, climbed up the ladder of

the loft to see whether his father was ready. The old man, always as a rule an early riser, had not yet made his

appearance. His son found him on his bed of straw, wrapped up in his blanket, with his eyes open and a

"I can't get up. I have a sort of chill over me that freezes my back. I can't stir."

And he stooped toward the old man, pulled off his blanket, caught him by the arm and lifted him up. But old

Amable began to whine, "Ooh! ooh! ooh! What suffering! Ooh! I can't. My back is stiffened up. The cold

"Well, you'll get no dinner, as I'm having a spread at Polyte's inn. This will teach you what comes of acting

And he hurried down the ladder and started out, accompanied by his relatives and guests.

The men had turned up the bottoms of their trousers so as not to get them wet in the snow. The women held

up their petticoats and showed their lean ankles with gray woollen stockings and their bony shanks

resembling broomsticks. And they all moved forward with a swinging gait, one behind the other, without

uttering a word, moving cautiously, for fear of losing the road which washidden beneath the flat, uniform,

As they approached the farmhouses they saw one or two persons waiting to join them, and the procession

went on without stopping and wound its way forward, following the invisible outlines of the road, so that it

resembled a living chaplet of black beads undulating through the white countryside.

In front of the bride's door a large group was stamping up and down the open space awaiting the bridegroom.

When he appeared they gave him a loud greeting, and presently Celeste came forth from her room, clad in a

blue dress, her shoulders covered with a small red shawl and her head adorned with orange flowers.

They directed their steps toward the mayor's office. Behind the pair about to be wedded a peasant woman

carried Victor's child, as if it were going to be baptized; and the risen, in pairs now, with arms linked, walked

After having been united by the mayor in the little municipal house the pair were made one by the cure, in his

turn, in the modest house of God. He blessed their union by promising them fruitfulness, then he preached to

them on the matrimonial virtues, the simple and healthful virtues of the country, work, concord and fidelity,

As soon as the couple reappeared on the threshold of the church shots were discharged from the ditch of the

cemetery. Only the barrels of the guns could be seen whence came forth rapid jets of smoke; then a head

could be seen gazing at the procession. It was Victor Lecoq celebrating the marriage of his old sweetheart,

wishing her happiness and sending her his good wishes with explosions of powder. He had employed some

friends of his, five or six laboring men, for these salvos of musketry. It was considered a nice attention.

The repast was given in Polyte Cacheprune's inn. Twenty covers were laid in the great hall where people

dined on market days, and the big leg of mutton turning before the spit, the fowls browned under their own

gravy, the chitterlings sputtering over the bright, clear fire filled the house with a thick odor of live coal

They sat down to table at midday and the soup was poured at once into the plates. All faces had already

brightened up; mouths opened to utter loud jokes and eyes were laughing with knowing winks. They were

The door opened, and old Amable appeared. He seemed in a bad humor and his face wore a scowl as he

dragged himself forward on his sticks, whining at every step to indicate his suffering. As soon as they saw

him they stopped talking, but suddenly his neighbor, Daddy Malivoire, a big joker, who knew all the little

tricks and ways of people, began to yell, just as Cesaire used to do, by making a speakingtrumpet of his

"Hallo, my cute old boy, you have a good nose on you to be able to smell Polyte's cookery from your own

A roar of laughter burst forth from the throats of those present. Malivoire, excited by his success, went on:

"There's nothing for the rheumatics like a chitterling poultice! It keeps your belly warm, along with a glass of

The men uttered shouts, banged the table with their fists, laughed, bending on one side and raising up their

bodies again as if they were working a pump. The women clucked like hens, while the servants wriggled,

standing against the walls. Old Amable was the only one that did not laugh, and, without making any reply,

They found a place for him in the middle of the table, facing his daughterinlaw, and, as soon as he was

seated, he began to eat. It was his son who was paying, after all; it was right he should take his share. With

each ladleful of soup that went into his stomach, with each mouthful of bread or meat crushed between his

gums, with each glass of cider or wine that flowed through his gullet he thought he was regaining something

of his own property, getting back a little of his money which all those gluttons were devouring, saving in fact

a portion of his own means. And he ate in silence with the obstinacy of a miser who hides his coppers, with

But all of a sudden he noticed at the end of the table Celeste's child on a woman's lap, and his eye remained

fixed on the little boy. He went on eating, with his glance riveted on the youngster, into whose mouth the

woman who minded him every now and then put a little morsel which he nibbled at. And the old man

suffered more from the few mouthfuls sucked by this little chap than from all that the others swallowed.

Celeste took her child in her arms, and they went on slowly through the pale night whitened by the snow. The

deaf old man, threefourths tipsy, and even more malicious under the influence of drink, refused to go

forward. Several times he even sat down with the object of making his daughterinlaw catch cold, and he

kept whining, without uttering a word, giving vent to a sort of continuous groaning as if he were in pain.

When they reached home he at once climbed up to his loft, while Cesaire made a bed for the child near the

deep niche where he was going to lie down with his wife. But as the newly wedded pair could not sleep

immediately, they heard the old man for a long time moving about on his bed of straw, and he even talked

aloud several times, whether it was that he was dreaming or that he let his thoughts escape through his mouth,

in spite of himself, not being able to keep them back, under the obsession of a fixed idea.

When he came down his ladder next morning he saw his daughterinlaw looking after the housekeeping.

And she placed at the end of the table the round black earthen bowl filled with steaming liquid. He sat down

without giving any answer, seized the hot bowl, warmed his hands with it in his customary fashion, and, as it

was very cold, even pressed it against his breast to try to make a little of the living heat of the boiling liquid

Then he took his sticks and went out into the fields, covered with ice, till it was time for dinner, for he had

He did not take his place in the household. He lived in the thatched house, as in bygone days, but he seemed

not to belong to it any longer, to be no longer interested in anything, to look upon those people, his son, the

Then the early spring made the seeds sprout forth again, and the peasants once more, like laborious ants,

passed their days in the fields, toiling from morning till night, under the wind and under the rain, along the

The year promised well for the newly married pair. The crops grew thick and strong. There were no late

frosts, and the apples bursting into bloom scattered on the grass their rosy white snow which promised a hail

Cesaire toiled hard, rose early and left off work late, in order to save the expense of a hired man.

Nevertheless one evening he came home so fatigued that he had to get to bed without supper. He rose up next

morning at the usual hour, but he could not eat, in spite of his fast on the previous night, and he had to come

back to the house in the middle of the afternoon in order to go to bed again. In the course of the night he

began to cough; he turned round on his straw couch, feverish, with his forehead burning, his tongue dry and

However, at daybreak he went toward his grounds, but next morning the doctor had to be sent for and

And he no longer left the dark recess in which he slept. He could be heard coughing, gasping and tossing

about in this hole. In order to see him, to give his medicine and to apply cuppingglasses they had tobring a

candle to the entrance. Then one could see his narrow head with his long matted beard underneath a thick

lacework of spiders' webs, which hung and floated when stirred by the air. And the hands of the sick man

Celeste watched him with restless activity, made him take physic, applied blisters to him, went back and forth

in the house, while old Amable remained at the edge of his loft, watching at a distance the gloomy cavern

where his son lay dying. He did not come near him, through hatred of the wife, sulking like an illtempered

Six more days passed, then one morning, as Celeste, who now slept on the ground on two loose bundles of

straw, was going to see whether her man was better, she no longer heard his rapid breathing from the interior

He did not answer. She put out her hand to touch him, and the flesh on his face felt cold as ice. She uttered a

At this cry the deaf old man appeared at the top of his ladder, and when he saw Celeste rushing to call for

help, he quickly descended, placed his hand on his son's face, and suddenly realizing what had happened,

went to shut the door from the inside, to prevent the wife from reentering and resuming possession of the

Some of the neighbors arrived, called out and knocked. He did not hear them. One of them broke the glass of

the window and jumped into the room. Others followed. The door was opened again and Celeste reappeared,

all in tears, with swollen face and bloodshot eyes. Then old Amable, vanquished, without uttering a word,

The funeral took place next morning. Then, after the ceremony, the fatherinlaw and the daughterinlaw

It was the usual dinner hour. She lighted the fire, made some soup and placed the plates on the table, while

the old man sat on the chair waiting without appearing to look at her. When the meal was ready she bawled in

"Come, daddy, you must eat." He rose up, took his seat at the end of the table, emptied his soup bowl,

masticated his bread and butter, drank his two glasses of cider and then took himself off.

It was one of those warm days, one of those enjoyable days when life ferments, pulsates, blooms all over the

Old Amable pursued a little path across the fields. He looked at the young wheat and the young oats, thinking

that his son was now under the earth, his poor boy! He walked along wearily, dragging his legs after him in a

limping fashion. And, as he was all alone in the plain, all alone under the blue sky, in the midst of the

growing crops, all alone with the larks which he saw hovering above his head, without hearing their light

Then he sat down beside a pond and remained there till evening, gazing at the little birds that came there to

drink. Then, as the night was falling, he returned to the house, supped without saying a word and climbed up

to his loft. And his life went on as in the past. Nothing was changed, except that his son Cesaire slept in the

What could he, an old man, do? He could work no longer; he was now good for nothing except to swallow

the soup prepared by his daughterinlaw. And he ate it in silence, morning and evening, watching with an

eye of rage the little boy also taking soup, right opposite him, at the other side of the table. Then he would go

out, prowl about the fields after the fashion of a vagabond, hiding behind the barns where he would sleep for

an hour or two as if he were afraid of being seen and then come back at the approach of night.

But Celeste's mind began to be occupied by graver anxieties. The farm needed a man to look after it and

cultivate it. Somebody should be there always to go through the fields, not a mere hired laborer, but a regular

farmer, a master who understood the business and would take an interest in the farm. A lone woman could

not manage the farming, watch the price of corn and direct the sale and purchase of cattle. Then ideas came

into her head, simple practical ideas, which she had turned over in her head at night. She could not marry

again before the end of the year, and it was necessary at once to take care of pressing interests, immediate

Only one man could help her out of her difficulties, Victor Lecoq, the father of her child. He was strong and

understood farming; with a little money in his pocket he would make an excellent cultivator. She was aware

So one morning, seeing him passing along the road with a cart of manure, she went out to meet him. When he

perceived her, he drew up his horses and she said to him as if she had met him the night before:

"Oh, I'd be all right, only that I'm alone in the house, which bothers me on account of the farm."

Then they remained chatting for a long time, leaning against the wheel of the heavy cart. The man every now

and then lifted up his cap to scratch his forehead and began thinking, while she, with flushed cheeks, went on

talking warmly, told him about her views, her plans; her projects for the future. At last he said in a low tone:

This particular Sunday was the day of the village festival, the annual festival in honor of the patron saint,

For the last eight days quaintlooking vehicles in which live the families of strolling fair exhibitors, lottery

managers, keepers of shooting galleries and other forms of amusement or exhibitors of curiosities whom the

peasants call "wondermakers" could be seen coming along the roads drawn slowly by gray or sorrel horses.

The dirty wagons with their floating curtains, accompanied by a melancholylooking dog, who trotted, with

his head down, between the wheels, drew up one after the other on the green in front of the town hall. Then a

tent was erected in front of each ambulant abode, and inside this tent could be seen, through the holes in the

canvas, glittering things which excited the envy or the curiosity of the village youngsters.

As soon as the morning of the fete arrived all the booths were opened, displaying their splendors of glass or

porcelain, and the peasants on their way to mass looked with genuine satisfaction at these modest shops

Early in the afternoon there was a crowd on the green. From every neighboring village the farmers arrived,

shaken along with their wives and children in the twowheeled open charsabancs, which rattled along,

swaying like cradles. They unharnessed at their friends' houses and the farmyards were filled with

strangelooking traps, gray, high, lean, crooked, like longclawed creatures from the depths of the sea. And

each family, with the youngsters in front and the grownup ones behind, came to the assembly with tranquil

steps, smiling countenances and open hands, big hands, red and bony, accustomed to work and apparently

A clown was blowing a trumpet. The barrelorgan accompanying the carrousel sent through the air its shrill

jerky notes. The lotterywheel made a whirring sound like that of cloth tearing, and every moment the crack

of the rifle could be heard. And the slowmoving throng passed on quietly in front of the booths resembling

paste in a fluid condition, with the motions of a flock of sheep and the awkwardness of heavy animals who

The girls, holding one another's arms in groups of six or eight, were singing; the youths followed them,

making jokes, with their caps over their ears and their blouses stiffened with starch, swollen out like blue

Old Amable himself, wearing his oldfashioned green frock coat, had wished to see the assembly, for he

He looked at the lotteries, stopped in front of the shooting galleries to criticize the shots and interested

himself specially in a very simple game which consisted in throwing a big wooden ball into the open mouth

They drank one glass of brandy, then two, then three, and old Amable once more began wandering through

the assembly. His thoughts became slightly confused, he smiled without knowing why, he smiled in front of

the lotteries, in front of the wooden horses and especially in front of the killing game. He remained there a

long time, filled with delight, when he saw a holidaymaker knocking down the gendarme or the cure, two

authorities whom he instinctively distrusted. Then he went back to the inn and drank a glass of cider to cool

Then he set out on his way to the farmhouse. A soft shadow, the warm shadow of a spring night, was slowly

When he reached the front door he thought he saw through the window which was lighted up two persons in

the house. He stopped, much surprised, then he went in, and he saw Victor Lecoq seated at the table, with a

plate filled with potatoes before him, taking his supper in the very same place where his son had sat.

And he turned round suddenly as if he wanted to go away. The night was very dark now. Celeste started up

He complied through inertia and sat down, watching in turn the man, the woman and the child. Then he

Victor Lecoq seemed quite at home, talked from time to time to Celeste, took up the child in his lap and

kissed him. And Celeste again served him with food, poured out drink for him and appeared happy while

speaking to him. Old Amable's eyes followed them attentively, though he could not hear what they were

When he had finished supper (and he had scarcely eaten anything, there was such a weight at his heart) he

rose up, and instead of ascending to his loft as he did every night he opened the gate of the yard and went out

Then she saw after the house, washed the plates and wiped the table, while the man quietly took off his

clothes. Then he slipped into the dark and hollow bed in which she had slept with Cesaire.

The yard gate opened and old Amable again appeared. As soon as he entered the house he looked round on

every side with the air of an old dog on the scent. He was in search of Victor Lecoq. As he did not see him,

he took the candle off the table and approached the dark niche in which his son had died. In the interior of it

he perceived the man lying under the bed clothes and already asleep. Then the deaf man noiselessly turned

Celeste had finished her work. She put her son into his bed, arranged everything and waited for her

She remained sitting on a chair, without moving her hands and with her eyes fixed on vacancy.

"It's over an hour since he went out. We ought to see whether he fell asleep on the bench outside the door."

She rose up, took the light and went out, shading the light with her hand in order to see through the darkness.

She saw nothing in front of the door, nothing on the bench, nothing on the dung heap, where the old man

But, just as she was on the point of going in again, she chanced to raise her eyes toward the big apple tree,

which sheltered the entrance to the farmyard, and suddenly she saw two feettwo feet at the height of her

He ran out in his shirt. She could not utter another word, and turning aside her head so as not to see, she

Not understanding what she meant, he took the candle in order to find out, and in the midst of the foliage lit

up from below he saw old Amable hanging high up with a stablehalter round his neck.

Victor ran to fetch a billhook, climbed up the tree and cut the halter. But the old man was already cold and