THE DEVIL .............................................................................................................................................9

THE SNIPE ............................................................................................................................................13

THE WILL .............................................................................................................................................14

WALTER SCHNAFFS' ADVENTURE...............................................................................................17

AT SEA ..................................................................................................................................................22

MINUET ................................................................................................................................................26

THE SON ...............................................................................................................................................29

THAT PIG OF A MORIN.....................................................................................................................35

SAINT ANTHONY ...............................................................................................................................40

LASTING LOVE ...................................................................................................................................45

PIERROT ...............................................................................................................................................48

A NORMANDY JOKE.........................................................................................................................52

FATHER MATTHEW ...........................................................................................................................54

The old ship's surgeon, holding out his glass, watched it as it slowly filled with the golden liquid. Then,

holding it in front of his eyes, he let the light from the lamp stream through it, smelled it, tasted a few drops

"Ah! the charming poison! Or rather the seductive murderer, the delightful destroyer of peoples!

"You people do not know it the way I do. You may have read that admirable book entitled L'Assommoir, but

you have not, as I have, seen alcohol exterminate a whole tribe of savages, a little kingdom of

"Right near here, in a little village in Brittany near Pontl'Abbe, I once witnessed a strange and terrible

tragedy caused by alcohol. I was spending my vacation in a little country house left me by my father. You

know this flat coast where the wind whistles day and night, where one sees, standing or prone, these giant

rocks which in the olden times were regarded as guardians, and which still retain something majestic and

imposing about them. I always expect to see them come to life and start to walk across the country with the

slow and ponderous tread of giants, or to unfold enormous granite wings and fly toward the paradise of the

"Everywhere is the sea, always ready on the slightest provocation to rise in its anger and shake its foamy

"And the men who travel on this terrible sea, which, with one motion of its green back, can overturn and

swallow up their frail barksthey go out in the little boats, day and night, hardy, weary and drunk. They are

often drunk. They have a saying which says: 'When the bottle is full you see the reef, but when it is empty

"Go into one of their huts; you will never find the father there. If you ask the woman what has become of her

husband, she will stretch her arms out over the dark ocean which rumbles and roars along the coast. He

remained, there one night, when he had had too much to drink; so did her oldest son. She has four more big,

"As I said, I was living in a little house near Pontl'Abbe. I was there alone with my servant, an old sailor,

and with a native family which took care of the grounds in my absence. It consisted of three persons, two

"A short time before Christmas my gardener's wife presented him with a boy. The husband asked me to stand

as godfather. I could hardly deny the request, and so he borrowed ten francs from me for the cost of the

"The second day of January was chosen as the date of the ceremony. For a week the earth had been covered

by an enormous white carpet of snow, which made this flat, low country seem vast and limitless. The ocean

appeared to be black in contrast with this white plain; one could see it rolling, raging and tossing its waves as

though wishing to annihilate its pale neighbor, which appeared to be dead, it was so calm, quiet and cold.

"At nine o'clock the father, Kerandec, came to my door with his sister inlaw, the big Kermagan, and the

nurse, who carried the infant wrapped up in a blanket. We started for the church. The weather was so cold

that it seemed to dry up the skin and crack it open. I was thinking of the poor little creature who was being

carried on ahead of us, and I said to myself that this Breton race must surely be of iron, if their children were

"Then the nurse sat down on one of the steps and began to undress the child. At first I thought there must

have been some slight accident, but I saw that they were leaving the poor little fellow naked completely

"The father and the aunt looked on undisturbed. It was the custom. If it were not adhered to misfortune was

"I scolded, threatened and pleaded. I used force to try to cover the frail creature. All was in vain. The nurse

ran away from me through the snow, and the body of the little one turned purple. I was about to leave these

brutes when I saw the priest coming across the country, followed. by the sexton and a young boy. I ran

towards him and gave vent to my indignation. He showed no surprise nor did he quicken his pace in the least.

"'What can you expect, sir? It's the custom. They all do it, and it's of no use trying to stop them.'

"He entered the vestry, while we remained outside on the church steps. I was suffering. But what about the

"At last the door opened. He went into the church. But the poor child had to remain naked throughout the

ceremony. It was interminable. The priest stammered over the Latin words and mispronounced them horribly.

He walked slowly and with a ponderous tread. His white surplice chilled my heart. It seemed as though, in

the name of a pitiless and barbarous god, he had wrapped himself in another kind of snow in order to torture

"Finally the christening was finished according to the rites and I saw the nurse once more take the frozen,

"Turning to my gardener, I said: "Hurry up and get home quickly so that you can warm that child.' I gave him

some advice so as to ward off, if not too late, a bad attack of pneumonia. He promised to follow my

instructions and left with his sisterinlaw and the nurse. I followed the priest into the vestry, and when I had

"As I had already given the father ten francs, I refused to pay twice. The priest threatened to destroy the paper

and to annul the ceremony. I, in turn, threatened him with the district attorney. The dispute was long, and I

"As soon as I reached home I went down to Kerandec's to find out whether everything was all right. Neither

father, nor sisterinlaw, nor nurse had yet returned. The mother, who had remained alone, was in bed,

shivering with cold and starving, for she had had nothing to eat since the day before.

"'Where the deuce can they have gone?' I asked. She answered without surprise or anger, 'They're going to

drink something to celebrate: It was the custom. Then I thought, of my ten francs which were to pay the

"I sent some broth to the mother and ordered a good fire to be built in the room. I was uneasy and furious and

promised myself to drive out these brutes, wondering with terror what was going to happen to the poor infant.

"It was already six, and they had not yet returned. I told my servant to wait for them and I went to bed. I soon

fell asleep and slept like a top. At daybreak I was awakened by my servant, who was bringing me my hot

"The man hesitated and then stammered: 'Oh! he came back, all right, after midnight, and so drunk that he

couldn't walk, and so were Kermagan and the nurse. I guess they must have slept in a ditch, for the little one

"'Yes, sir. They brought it back to Mother Kerandec. When she saw it she began to cry, and now they are

"'Yes, sir. I only found it out this morning. As Kerandec had no more brandy or money, he took some wood

alcohol, which monsieur gave him for the lamp, and all four of them are now drinking that. The mother is

"I had hastily put on some clothes, and seizing a stick, with the intention of applying it to the backs of these

"The mother was raving drunk beside the blue body of her dead baby. Kerandec, the nurse, and the Kermagan

woman were snoring on the floor. I had to take care of the mother, who died towards noon."

The old doctor was silent. He took up the brandybottle and poured out another glass. He held it up to the

lamp, and the light streaming through it imparted to the liquid the amber color of molten topaz. With one

"Will you come and open the hunting season with me at my farm at Marinville? I shall be delighted if you

will, my dear boy. In the first place, I am all alone. It is rather a difficult ground to get at, and the place I live

I accepted his invitation, and on Saturday we set off on the train going to Normandy. We alighted at a station

called Almivare, and Baron Rene, pointing to a carryall drawn by a timid horse and driven by a big

The driver extended his hand to his landlord, and the baron pressed it warmly, asking:

We jumped into this swinging hencoop perched on two enormous wheels, and the young horse, after a violent

swerve, started into a gallop, pitching us into the air like balls. Every fall backward on the wooden bench

Our two dogs behind us, in the empty part of the hencoop, were standing up and sniffing the air of the plains,

The baron gazed with a sad eye into the distance at the vast Norman landscape, undulating and melancholy,

like an immense English park, where the farmyards, surrounded by two or four rows of trees and full of

dwarfed apple trees which hid the houses, gave a vista as far as the eye could see of forest trees, copses and

shrubbery such as landscape gardeners look for in laying out the boundaries of princely estates.

He was a pure Norman, tall and strong, with a slight paunch, and of the old race of adventurers who went to

found kingdoms on the shores of every ocean. He was about fifty years of age, ten years less perhaps than the

The latter was a lean peasant, all skin and bone, one of those men who live a hundred years.

After two hours' travelling over stony roads, across that green and monotonous plain, the vehicle entered one

of those orchard farmyards and drew up before in old structure falling into decay, where an old maid servant

We entered the farmhouse. The smoky kitchen was high and spacious. The copper utensils and the crockery

shone in the reflection of the hearth. A cat lay asleep on a chair, a dog under the table. One perceived an odor

of milk, apples, smoke, that indescribable smell peculiar to old farmhouses; the odor of the earth, of the walls,

of furniture, the odor of spilled stale soup, of former washdays and of former inhabitants, the smell of

animals and of human beings combined, of things and of persons, the odor of time, and of things that have

I went out to have a look at the farmyard. It was very large, full of apple trees, dwarfed and crooked, and

laden with fruit which fell on the grass around them. In this farmyard the Norman smell of apples was as

strong as that of the bloom of orange trees on the shores of the south of France.

Four rows of beeches surrounded this inclosure. They were so tall that they seemed to touch the clouds at this

hour of nightfall, and their summits, through which the night winds passed, swayed and sang a mournful,

The baron was warming his feet at the fire, and was listening to the farmer's talk about country matters. He

talked about marriages, births and deaths, then about the fall in the price of grain and the latest news about

cattle. The "Veularde" (as he called a cow that had been bought at the fair of Veules) had calved in the

middle of June. The cider had not been firstclass last year. Apricots were almost disappearing from the

Then we had dinner. It was a good rustic meal, simple and abundant, long and tranquil. And while we were

dining I noticed the special kind of friendly familiarity which had struck me from the start between the baron

Outside, the beeches continued sighing in the night wind, and our two dogs, shut up in a shed, were whining

and howling in an uncanny fashion. The fire was dying out in the big fireplace. The maidservant had gone

"If you don't mind, M'sieu le Baron, I'm going to bed. I am not used to staying up late."

The baron extended his hand toward him and said: "Go, my friend," in so cordial a tone that I said, as soon as

"Better than that, my dear fellow! It is a drama, an old drama, simple and very sad, that attaches him to me.

"You know that my father was colonel in a cavalry regiment. His orderly was this young fellow, now an old

man, the son of a farmer. When my father retired from the army he took this former soldier, then about forty;

as his servant. I was at that time about thirty. We were living in our old chateau of Valrenne, near

"At this period my mother's chambermaid was one of the prettiest girls you could see, fairhaired, slender

and sprightly in manner, a genuine soubrette of the old type that no longer exists. Today these creatures

spring up into hussies before their time. Paris, with the aid of the railways, attracts them, calls them, takes

hold of them, as soon as they are budding into womanhood, these little sluts who in old times remained

simple maidservants. Every man passing by, as recruiting sergeants did formerly, looking for recruits, with

conscripts, entices and ruins them these foolish lassiesand we have now only the scum of the female sex

for servant maids, all that is dull, nasty, common and illformed, too ugly, even for gallantry.

"Well, this girl was charming, and I often gave her a kiss in dark corners; nothing more, I swear to you! She

was virtuous, besides; and I had some respect for my mother's house, which is more than can be said of the

"Now, it happened that my manservant, the exsoldier, the old farmer you have just seen, fell madly in love

with this girl, perfectly daft. The first thing we noticed was that he forgot everything, he paid no attention to

"He grew thin; he broke glasses and let plates fall when waiting on the table. We thought he must have been

attacked by some nervous affection, and sent for the doctor, who thought he could detect symptoms of spinal

disease. Then my father, full of anxiety about his faithful manservant, decided to place him in a private

hospital. When the poor fellow heard of my father's intentions he made a clean breast of it.

"And my father began to laugh so immoderately that my mother called out through the wall of the next room:

"And when she came in he told her, with tears in his eyes from sheer laughter, that his idiot of a servantman

"My mother said with the utmost gravity: 'We must try to arrange this matter the best way we can.'

"So Louise was sent for and questioned by my mother; and she said in reply that she knew all about Jean's

liking for her, that in fact Jean had spoken to her about it several times, but that she did not want him. She

"And two months elapsed during which my father and mother never ceased to urge this girl to marry Jean. As

she declared she was not in love with any other man, she could not give any serious reason for her refusal.

My father at last overcame her resistance by means of a big present of money, and started the pair of them on

a farmthis very farm. I did not see them for three years, and then I learned that Louise had died of

consumption. But my father and mother died, too, in their turn, and it was two years more before I found

"At last one autumn day about the end of October the idea came into my head to go hunting on this part of

"So one evening, one wet evening, I arrived at this house. I was shocked to find my father's old servant with

perfectly white hair, though he was not more than fortyfive or fortysix years of age. I made him dine with

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

roof, the walls, and the windows, flowing in a perfect deluge into the farmyard; and my dog was howling in

"All of a sudden, when the servantmaid had gone to bed, the man said in a timid voice:

"'It wasit wasI'd rather, all the same, tell you nothing about it but I mustI must. Well, it's thisit

wasn't consumption she died of at all. It was griefwell, that's the long and short of it. As soon as she came

to live here after we were married, she grew thin; she changed so that you wouldn't know her, M'sieu le

Baron. She was just as I was before I married her, but it was just the opposite, just the opposite.

"'I sent for the doctor. He said it was her liver that was affectedhe said it was what he called a "hepatic"

complaintI don't know these big words, M'sieu le Baron. Then I bought medicine for her, heaps on heaps

of bottles that cost about three hundred francs. But she'd take none of them; she wouldn't have them; she said:

"It's no use, my poor Jean; it wouldn't do me any good." I saw well that she had some hidden trouble; and

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

caps, and dresses, and hair oil, and earrings. Nothing did her any good. And I saw that she was going to die.

And so one night at the end of November, one snowy night, after she had been in bed the whole day, she told

"Jean," she said, "I am going to make a confession to you. I owe it to you, Jean. I have never been false to

you, never! never, before or after you married me. M'sieu le Cure is there, and can tell you so; he knows my

soul. Well, listen, Jean. If I am dying, it is because I was not able to console myself for leaving the chateau,

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

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

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

by, when I am no longer here. You will tell him, swear you, will, Jeanswear itin the presence of M'sieu

le Cure! It will console me to know that he will know it one day, that this was the cause of my death! Swear

'Well, I gave her my promise, M'sieu It Baron, and on the faith of an honest man I have kept my word.'

"Good God! my dear boy, you can't form any idea of the emotion that filled me when I heard this poor devil,

whose wife I had killed without suspecting it, telling me this story on that wet night in this very kitchen.

"He murmured: 'Well, that's all, M'sieu le Baron. I could not help it, one way or the otherand now it's all

"He asked, 'Will you come and see her grave?' I nodded assent, for I couldn't speak. He rose, lighted a

"Suddenly he stopped before a marble slab and said: 'There it is,' and he flashed the lantern close to it so that I

"We fell on our knees in the damp grass, he and I, with the lantern between us, and I saw the rain beating on

the white marble slab. And I thought of the heart of her sleeping there in her grave. Ah! poor heart! poor

heart! "Since then I come here every year. And I don't know why, but I feel as if I were guilty of some crime

The peasant and the doctor stood on opposite sides of the bed, beside the old, dying woman. She was calm

and resigned and her mind quite clear as she looked at them and listened to their conversation. She was going

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

The July sun streamed in at the window and the open door and cast its hot flames on the uneven brown clay

floor, which had been stamped down by four generations of clodhoppers. The smell of the fields came in also,

driven by the sharp wind and parched by the noontide heat. The grass hoppers chirped themselves hoarse,

and filled the country with their shrill noise, which was like that of the wooden toys which are sold to

The doctor raised his voice and said: "Honore, you cannot leave your mother in this state; she may die at any

moment." And the peasant, in great distress, replied: "But I must get in my wheat, for it has been lying on the

ground a long time, and the weather is just right for it; what do you say about it, mother?" And the dying old

woman, still tormented by her Norman avariciousness, replied yes with her eyes and her forehead, and thus

But the doctor got angry, and, stamping his foot, he said: "You are no better than a brute, do you hear, and I

will not allow you to do it, do you understand? And if you must get in your wheat today, go and fetch Rapet's

wife and make her look after your mother; I will have it, do you understand me? And if you do not obey me, I

The peasant, a tall, thin fellow with slow movements, who was tormented by indecision, by his fear of the

doctor and his fierce love of saving, hesitated, calculated, and stammered out: "How much does La Rapet

charge for attending sick people?" "How should I know?" the doctor cried. "That depends upon how long she

is needed. Settle it with her, by Heaven! But I want her to be here within an hour, do you hear?"

So the man decided. "I will go for her," he replied; "don't get angry, doctor." And the latter left, calling out as

he went: "Be careful, be very careful, you know, for I do not joke when I am angry!" As soon as they were

alone the peasant turned to his mother and said in a resigned voice: "I will go and fetch La Rapet, as the man

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

soon as she had sewn her customers into that linen cloth from which they would emerge no more, she went

and took up her iron to smooth out the linen of the living. Wrinkled like a last year's apple, spiteful, envious,

avaricious with a phenomenal avarice, bent double, as if she had been broken in half across the loins by the

constant motion of passing the iron over the linen, one might have said that she had a kind of abnormal and

cynical love of a death struggle. She never spoke of anything but of the people she had seen die, of the

various kinds of deaths at which she had been present, and she related with the greatest minuteness details

When Honore Bontemps entered her cottage, he found her preparing the starch for the collars of the women

villagers, and he said: "Good evening; I hope you are pretty well, Mother Rapet?"

She turned her head round to look at him, and said: "As usual, as usual, and you?" "Oh! as for me, I am as

well as I could wish, but my mother is not well." "Your mother?" "Yes, my mother!" "What is the matter with

The old woman took her hands out of the water and asked with sudden sympathy: "Is she as bad as all that?"

"The doctor says she will not last till morning." "Then she certainly is very bad!" Honore hesitated, for he

wanted to make a few preparatory remarks before coming to his proposition; but as he could hit upon

"How much will you ask to stay with her till the end? You know that I am not rich, and I can not even afford

to keep a servant girl. It is just that which has brought my poor mother to this statetoo much worry and

fatigue! She did the work of ten, in spite of her ninetytwo years. You don't find any made of that stuff

La Rapet answered gravely: "There are two prices: Forty sous by day and three francs by night for the rich,

and twenty sous by day and forty by night for the others. You shall pay me the twenty and forty." But the,

peasant reflected, for he knew his mother well. He knew how tenacious of life, how vigorous and unyielding

she was, and she might last another week, in spite of the doctor's opinion; and so he said resolutely: "No, I

would rather you would fix a price for the whole time until the end. I will take my chance, one way or the

other. The doctor says she will die very soon. If that happens, so much the better for you, and so much the

worse for her, but if she holds out till tomorrow or longer, so much the better for her and so much the worse

The nurse looked at the man in astonishment, for she had never treated a death as a speculation, and she

hesitated, tempted by the idea of the possible gain, but she suspected that he wanted to play her a trick. "I can

They did not speak on the road; she walked with short, hasty steps, while he strode on with his long legs, as if

The cows lying down in the fields, overcome by the heat, raised their heads heavily and lowed feebly at the

When they got near the house, Honore Bontemps murmured: "Suppose it is all over?" And his unconscious

But the old woman was not dead. She was lying on her back, on her wretched bed, her hands covered with a

purple cotton counterpane, horribly thin, knotty hands, like the claws of strange animals, like crabs, half

closed by rheumatism, fatigue and the work of nearly a century which she had accomplished.

La Rapet went up to the bed and looked at the dying woman, felt her pulse, tapped her on the chest, listened

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

time, she went out of the room, followed by Honore. Her decided opinion was that the old woman would not

last till night. He asked: "Well?" And the sicknurse replied: "Well, she may last two days, perhaps three.

"Six francs! six francs!" he shouted. "Are you out of your mind? I tell you she cannot last more than five or

six hours!" And they disputed angrily for some time, but as the nurse said she must go home, as the time was

going by, and as his wheat would not come to the farmyard of its own accord, he finally agreed to her terms.

"Very well, then, that is settled; six francs, including everything, until the corpse is taken out."

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

She had brought some work with her, for she worked without ceasing by the side of the dead and dying,

sometimes for herself, sometimes for the family which employed her as seamstress and paid her rather more

in that capacity. Suddenly, she asked: "Have you received the last sacraments, Mother Bontemps?"

The old peasant woman shook her head, and La Rapet, who was very devout, got up quickly:

"Good heavens, is it possible? I will go and fetch the cure"; and she rushed off to the parsonage so quickly

that the urchins in the street thought some accident had happened, when they saw her running.

The priest came immediately in his surplice, preceded by a choir boy who rang a bell to announce the passage

of the Host through the parched and quiet country. Some men who were working at a distance took off their

large hats and remained motionless until the white vestment had disappeared behind some farm buildings; the

women who were making up the sheaves stood up to make the sign of the cross; the frightened black hens ran

away along the ditch until they reached a wellknown hole, through which they suddenly disappeared, while

a foal which was tied in a meadow took fright at the sight of the surplice and began to gallop round and

round, kicking cut every now and then. The acolyte, in his red cassock, walked quickly, and the priest, with

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

prayers; while last of all came La Rapet, bent almost double as if she wished to prostrate herself, as she

Honore saw them pass in the distance, and he asked: "Where is our priest going?" His man, who was more

The peasant was not surprised, and said: "That may be," and went on with his work.

Mother Bontemps confessed, received absolution and communion, and the priest took his departure, leaving

the two women alone in the suffocating room, while La Rapet began to look at the dying woman, and to ask

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

fastened to the wall by two pins, to flap up and down; the scanty window curtains, which had formerly been

white, but were now yellow and covered with flyspecks, looked as if they were going to fly off, as if they

Lying motionless, with her eyes open, she seemed to await with indifference that death which was so near

and which yet delayed its coming. Her short breathing whistled in her constricted throat. It would stop

altogether soon, and there would be one woman less in the world; no one would regret her.

At nightfall Honore returned, and when he went up to the bed and saw that his mother was still alive, he

asked: "How is she?" just as he had done formerly when she had been ailing, and then he sent La Rapet away,

saying to her: "Tomorrow morning at five o'clock, without fail." And she replied: "Tomorrow, at five

She came at daybreak, and found Honore eating his soup, which he had made himself before going to work,

and the sicknurse asked him: "Well, is your mother dead?" "She is rather better, on the contrary," he replied,

La Rapet, seized with anxiety, went up to the dying woman, who remained in the same state, lethargic and

impassive, with her eyes open and her hands clutching the counterpane. The nurse perceived that this might

go on thus for two days, four days, eight days, and her avaricious mind was seized with fear, while she was

furious at the sly fellow who had tricked her, and at the woman who would not die.

Nevertheless, she began to work, and waited, looking intently at the wrinkled face of Mother Bontemps.

When Honore returned to breakfast he seemed quite satisfied and even in a bantering humor. He was

La Rapet was becoming exasperated; every minute now seemed to her so much time and money stolen from

her. She felt a mad inclination to take this old woman, this, headstrong old fool, this obstinate old wretch, and

to stop that short, rapid breath, which was robbing her of her time and money, by squeezing her throat a little.

But then she reflected on the danger of doing so, and other thoughts came into her head; so she went up to the

Then the sicknurse began to talk and to tell her tales which were likely to terrify the weak mind of the dying

woman. Some minutes before one dies the Devil appears, she said, to all who are in the death throes. He has a

broom in his hand, a saucepan on his head, and he utters loud cries. When anybody sees him, all is over, and

that person has only a few moments longer to live. She then enumerated all those to whom the Devil had

appeared that year: Josephine Loisel, Eulalie Ratier, Sophie Padaknau, Seraphine Grospied.

Mother Bontemps, who had at last become disturbed in mind, moved about, wrung her hands, and tried to

turn her head to look toward the end of the room. Suddenly La Rapet disappeared at the foot of the bed. She

took a sheet out of the cupboard and wrapped herself up in it; she put the iron saucepan on her head, so that

its three short bent feet rose up like horns, and she took a broom in her right hand and a tin pail in her left,

When it came down, it certainly made a terrible noise. Then, climbing upon a chair, the nurse lifted up the

curtain which hung at the bottom of the bed, and showed herself, gesticulating and uttering shrill cries into

the iron saucepan which covered her face, while she menaced the old peasant woman, who was nearly dead,

Terrified, with an insane expression on her face, the dying woman made a superhuman effort to get up and

escape; she even got her shoulders and chest out of bed; then she fell back with a deep sigh. All was over, and

La Rapet calmly put everything back into its place; the broom into the corner by the cupboard the sheet inside

it, the saucepan on the hearth, the pail on the floor, and the chair against the wall. Then, with professional

movements, she closed the dead woman's large eyes, put a plate on the bed and poured some holy water into

it, placing in it the twig of boxwood that had been nailed to the chest of drawers, and kneeling down, she

fervently repeated the prayers for the dead, which she knew by heart, as a matter of business.

And when Honore returned in the evening he found her praying, and he calculated immediately that she had

made twenty sows out of him, for she had only spent three days and one night there, which made five francs

Old Baron des Ravots had for forty years been the champion sportsman of his province. But a stroke of

paralysis had kept him in his chair for the last five or six years. He could now only shoot pigeons from the

He was a goodnatured business man, who had much of the literary spirit of a former century. He

worshipped anecdotes, those little risque anecdotes, and also true stories of events that happened in his

On sunny days he had his large reclining chair, similar to a bed, wheeled to the hall door. A man servant

behind him held his guns, loaded them and handed them to his master. Another valet, hidden in the bushes,

let fly a pigeon from time to time at irregular intervals, so that the baron should be unprepared and be always

And from morning till night he fired at the birds, much annoyed if he were taken by surprise and laughing till

he cried when the animal fell straight to the earth or, turned over in some comical and unexpected manner. He

would turn to the man who was loading the gun and say, almost choking with laughter:

In autumn, when the shooting season opened, he invited his friends as he had done formerly, and loved to

hear them firing in the distance. He counted the shots and was pleased when they followed each other rapidly.

And in the evening he made each guest give a faithful account of his day. They remained three hours at table

They were strange and improbable adventures in which the romancing spirit of the sportsmen delighted.

Some of them were memorable stories and were repeated regularly. The story of a rabbit that little Vicomte

de Bourril had missed in his vestibule convulsed them with laughter each year anew. Every five minutes a

"I heard 'birr! birr!' and a magnificent covey rose at ten paces from me. I aimed. Pif! paf! and I saw a shower,

Whenever this queen of birds was in season the same ceremony took place at each dinner. As they

worshipped this incomparable bird, each guest ate one every evening, but the heads were all left in the dish.

Then the baron, acting the part of a bishop, had a plate brought to him containing a little fat, and he carefully

anointed the precious heads, holding them by the tip of their slender, needlelike beak. A lighted candle was

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

whole contrivance steady by means of little crossed sticks, and carefully placed this object on the neck of a

The guest to whom the long beak pointed when the head stopped became the possessor of all the heads, a

He took them one by one and toasted them over the candle. The grease sputtered, the roasting flesh smoked

and the lucky winner ate the head, holding it by the beak and uttering exclamations of enjoyment.

When he had finished the last head he was obliged, at the baron's orders, to tell an anecdote to compensate

I knew that tall young fellow, Rene de Bourneval. He was an agreeable man, though rather melancholy and

seemed prejudiced against everything, was very skeptical, and he could with a word tear down social

"There are no honorable men, or, at least, they are only relatively so when compared with those lower than

He had two brothers, whom he never saw, the Messieurs de Courcils. I always supposed they were by another

father, on account of the difference in the name. I had frequently heard that the family had a strange history,

but did not know the details. As I took a great liking to Rene we soon became intimate friends, and one

evening, when I had been dining with him alone, I asked him, by chance: "Are you a son of the first or

second marriage?" He grew rather pale, and then flushed, and did not speak for a few moments; he was

visibly embarrassed. Then he smiled in the melancholy, gentle manner, which was peculiar to him, and said:

"My dear friend, if it will not weary you, I can give you some very strange particulars about my life. I know

that you are a sensible man, so I do not fear that our friendship will suffer by my I revelations; and should it

"My mother, Madame de Courcils, was a poor little, timid woman, whom her husband had married for the

sake of her fortune, and her whole life was one of martyrdom. Of a loving, timid, sensitive disposition, she

was constantly being illtreated by the man who ought to have been my father, one of those boors called

country gentlemen. A month after their marriage he was living a licentious life and carrying on liaisons with

the wives and daughters of his tenants. This did not prevent him from having three children by his wife, that

is, if you count me in. My mother said nothing, and lived in that noisy house like a little mouse. Set aside,

unnoticed, nervous, she looked at people with her bright, uneasy, restless eyes, the eyes of some terrified

creature which can never shake off its fear. And yet she was pretty, very pretty and fair, a pale blonde, as if

"Among the friends of Monsieur de Courcils who constantly came to her chateau, there was an excavalry

officer, a widower, a man who was feared, who was at the same time tender and violent, capable of the most

determined resolves, Monsieur de Bourneval, whose name I bear. He was a tall, thin man, with a heavy black

mustache. I am very like him. He was a man who had read a great deal, and his ideas were not like those of

most of his class. His greatgrandmother had been a friend of J. J. Rousseau's, and one might have said that

he had inherited something of this ancestral connection. He knew the Contrat Social, and the Nouvelle

Heloise by heart, and all those philosophical books which prepared in advance the overthrow of our old

"It seems that he loved my mother, and she loved him, but their liaison was carried on so secretly that no one

guessed at its existence. The poor, neglected, unhappy woman must have clung to him in despair, and in her

intimacy with him must have imbibed all his ways of thinking, theories of free thought, audacious ideas of

independent love; but being so timid she never ventured to speak out, and it was all driven back, condensed,

"My two brothers were very hard towards her, like their father, and never gave her a caress, and, accustomed

to seeing her count for nothing in the house, they treated her rather like a servant. I was the only one of her

"When she died I was seventeen, and I must add, in order that you may understand what follows, that a

lawsuit between my father and mother had been decided in my mother's favor, giving her the bulk of the

property, and, thanks to the tricks of the law, and the intelligent devotion of a lawyer to her interests, the right

"We were told that there was a will at the lawyer's office and were invited to be present at the reading of it. I

can remember it, as if it were yesterday. It was an imposing scene, dramatic, burlesque and surprising,

occasioned by the posthumous revolt of that dead woman, by the cry for liberty, by the demands of that

martyred one who had been crushed by our oppression during her lifetime and who, from her closed tomb,

"The man who believed he was my father, a stout, ruddyfaced man, who looked like a butcher, and my

brothers, two great fellows of twenty and twentytwo, were waiting quietly in their chairs. Monsieur de

Bourneval, who had been invited to be present, came in and stood behind me. He was very pale and bit his

mustache, which was turning gray. No doubt he was prepared for what was going to happen. The lawyer

doublelocked the door and began to read the will, after having opened, in our presence, the envelope, sealed

My friend stopped talking abruptly, and rising, took from his writing table an old paper, unfolded it, kissed

I first of all ask God, and then my dear son Rene to pardon me for the act I am about to commit. I believe that

my child's heart is great enough to understand me, and to forgive me. I have suffered my whole life long. I

was married out of calculation, then despised, misunderstood, oppressed and constantly deceived by my

"'My elder sons never loved me, never petted me, scarcely treated me as a mother, but during my whole life I

did my duty towards them, and I owe them nothing more after my death. The ties of blood cannot exist

without daily and constant affection. An ungrateful son is less than, a stranger; he is a culprit, for he has no

"'I have always trembled before men, before their unjust laws, their inhuman customs, their shameful

prejudices. Before God, I have no longer any fear. Dead, I fling aside disgraceful hypocrisy; I dare to speak

"'I therefore leave that part of my fortune of which the law allows me to dispose, in trust to my dear lover,

"'And I declare before the Supreme Judge who hears me, that I should have cursed heaven and my own

existence, if I had not found the deep, devoted, tender, unshaken affection of my lover; if I had not felt in his

arms that the Creator made His creatures to love, sustain and console each other, and to weep together in the

"'Monsieur de Courcils is the father of my two eldest sons; Rene, alone, owes his life to Monsieur de

Bourneval. I pray the Master of men and of their destinies, to place father and son above social prejudices, to

"Then Monsieur de Bourneval stepped forward and said in a loud, penetrating voice: 'I, Simon de Bourneval,

solemnly declare that this writing contains nothing but the strict truth, and I am ready to prove it by letters

"On hearing that, Monsieur de Courcils went up to him, and I thought that they were going to attack each

other. There they stood, both of them tall, one stout and the other thin, both trembling. My mother's husband

stammered out: 'You are a worthless wretch!' And the other replied in a loud, dry voice: 'We will meet

elsewhere, monsieur. I should have already slapped your ugly face and challenged you long since if I had not,

before everything else, thought of the peace of mind during her lifetime of that poor woman whom you

"Then, turning to me, he said: 'You are my son; will you come with me? I have no right to take you away, but

I shall assume it, if you are willing to come with me: I shook his hand without replying, and we went out

"Two days later Monsieur de Bourneval killed Monsieur de Courcils in a duel. My brothers, to avoid a

terrible scandal, held their tongues. I offered them and they accepted half the fortune which my mother had

left me. I took my real father's name, renouncing that which the law gave me, but which was not really mine.

He rose from his chair, walked up and down the room, and, standing in front of me, said:

"Well, I say that my mother's will was one of the most beautiful, the most loyal, as well as one of the grandest

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

unfortunate of men. He was large, had difficulty in walking, was short of breath and suffered frightfully with

his feet, which were very flat and very fat. But he was a peaceful, benevolent man, not warlike or sanguinary,

the father of four children whom he adored, and married to a little blonde whose little tendernesses, attentions

and kisses he recalled with despair every evening. He liked to rise late and retire early, to eat good things in a

leisurely manner and to drink beer in the saloon. He reflected, besides, that all that is sweet in existence

vanishes with life, and he maintained in his heart a fearful hatred, instinctive as well as logical, for cannon,

rifles, revolvers and swords, but especially for bayonets, feeling that he was unable to dodge this dangerous

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

thought long and deeply about those he had left behind and of the dangers in his path. "If he were killed what

would become of the little ones? Who would provide for them and bring them up?" Just at present they were

not rich, although he had borrowed when he left so as to leave them some money. And Walter Schnaffs wept

At the beginning of a battle his legs became so weak that he would have fallen if he had not reflected that the

entire army would pass over his body. The whistling of the bullets gave him gooseflesh.

His company was marching on Normandy, and one day he was sent to reconnoitre with a small detachment,

simply to explore a portion of the territory and to return at once. All seemed quiet in the country; nothing

But as the Prussians were quietly descending into a little valley traversed by deep ravines a sharp fusillade

made them halt suddenly, killing twenty of their men, and a company of sharpshooters, suddenly emerging

from a little wood as large as your hand, darted forward with bayonets at the end of their rifles.

Walter Schnaffs remained motionless at first, so surprised and bewildered that he did not even think of

making his escape. Then he was seized with a wild desire to run away, but he remembered at once that he ran

like a tortoise compared with those thin Frenchmen, who came bounding along like a lot of goats. Perceiving

a large ditch full of brushwood covered with dead leaves about six paces in front of him, he sprang into it

with both feet together, without stopping to think of its depth, just as one jumps from a bridge into the river.

He fell like an arrow through a thick layer of vines and thorny brambles that tore his face and hands and

landed heavily in a sitting posture on a bed of stones. Raising his eyes, he saw the sky through the hole he

had made in falling through. This aperture might betray him, and he crawled along carefully on hands and

knees at the bottom of this ditch beneath the covering of interlacing branches, going as fast as he could and

getting away from the scene of the skirmish. Presently he stopped and sat down, crouched like a hare amid

He heard firing and cries and groans going on for some time. Then the noise of fighting grew fainter and

Suddenly something stirred, beside him. He was frightfully startled. It was a little bird which had perched on

a branch and was moving the dead leaves. For almost an hour Walter Schnaffs' heart beat loud and rapidly.

Night fell, filling the ravine with its shadows. The soldier began to think. What was he to do? What was to

become of him? Should he rejoin the army? But how? By what road? And he began over again the horrible

life of anguish, of terror, of fatigue and suffering that he had led since the commencement of the war. No! He

no longer had the courage! He would not have the energy necessary to endure long marches and to face the

But what should he do? He could not stay in this ravine in concealment until the end of hostilities. No,

indeed! If it were not for having to eat, this prospect would not have daunted him greatly. But he had to eat,

And here he was, alone, armed and in uniform, on the enemy's territory, far from those who would protect

All at once he thought: "If I were only a prisoner!" And his heart quivered with a longing, an intense desire to

be taken prisoner by the French. A prisoner, he would be saved, fed, housed, sheltered from bullets and

swords, without any apprehension whatever, in a good, well kept prison. A prisoner! What a dream:

He rose, determined to put this plan into execution without a moment's delay. But he stood motionless,

Where would he make himself a prisoner and how? In What direction? And frightful pictures, pictures of

He would run terrible danger in venturing alone through the country with his pointed helmet.

Supposing he should meet some peasants. These peasants seeing a Prussian who had lost his way, an

unprotected Prussian, would kill him as if he were a stray dog! They would murder him with their forks, their

picks, their scythes and their shovels. They would make a stew of him, a pie, with the frenzy of exasperated,

If he should meet the sharpshooters! These sharpshooters, madmen without law or discipline, would shoot

him just for amusement to pass an hour; it would make them laugh to see his head. And he fancied he was

already leaning against a wall infront of four rifles whose little black apertures seemed to be gazing at him.

Supposing he should meet the French army itself. The vanguard would take him for a scout, for some bold

and sly trooper who had set off alone to reconnoitre, and they would fire at him. And he could already hear,

in imagination, the irregular shots of soldiers lying in the brush, while he himself, standing in the middle of

the field, was sinking to the earth, riddled like a sieve with bullets which he felt piercing his flesh.

It was quite a dark, black and silent night. He no longer budged, trembling at all the slight and unfamiliar

sounds that occur at night. The sound of a rabbit crouching at the edge of his burrow almost made him run.

The cry of an owl caused him positive anguish, giving him a nervous shock that pained like a wound. He

opened his big eyes as wide as possible to try and see through the darkness, and he imagined every moment

After interminable hours in which he suffered the tortures of the damned, he noticed through his leafy cover

that the sky was becoming bright. He at once felt an intense relief. His limbs stretched out, suddenly relaxed,

When he awoke the sun appeared to be almost at the meridian. It must be noon. No sound disturbed the

He yawned, his mouth watering at the thought of sausage, the good sausage the soldiers have, and he felt a

He rose from the ground, walked a few steps, found that his legs were weak and sat down to reflect. For two

or three hours he again considered the pros and cons, changing his mind every moment, baffled, unhappy,

Finally he had an idea that seemed logical and practical. It was to watch for a villager passing by alone,

unarmed and with no dangerous tools of his trade, and to run to him and give himself up, making him

He took off his helmet, the point of which might betray him, and put his head out of his hiding place with the

No solitary pedestrian could be perceived on the horizon. Yonder, to the right, smoke rose from the chimney

of a little village, smoke from kitchen fires! And yonder, to the left, he saw at the end of an avenue of trees a

large turreted chateau. He waited till evening, suffering frightfully from hunger, seeing nothing but flights of

He stretched himself out in his retreat and slept a feverish sleep, haunted by nightmares, the sleep of a

Dawn again broke above his head and he began to make his observations. But the landscape was deserted as

on the previous day, and a new fear came into Walter Schnaffs' mindthe fear of death by hunger! He

pictured himself lying at full length on his back at the bottom of his hiding place, with his two eyes closed,

and animals, little creatures of all kinds, approached and began to feed on his dead body, attacking it all over

at once, gliding beneath his clothing to bite his cold flesh, and a big crow pecked out his eyes with its sharp

He almost became crazy, thinking he was going to faint and would not be able to walk. And he was just

preparing to rush off to the village, determined to dare anything, to brave everything, when he perceived three

peasants walking to the fields with their forks across their shoulders, and he dived back into his hiding place.

But as soon as it grew dark he slowly emerged from the ditch and started off, stooping and fearful, with

beating heart, towards the distant chateau, preferring to go there rather than to the village, which seemed to

The lower windows were brilliantly lighted. One of them was open and from it escaped a strong odor of roast

meat, an odor which suddenly penetrated to the olfactories and to the stomach of Walter Schnaffs, tickling his

nerves, making him breathe quickly, attracting him irresistibly and inspiring his heart with the boldness of

And abruptly, without reflection, he placed himself, helmet on head, in front of the window.

Eight servants were at dinner around a large table. But suddenly one of the maids sat there, her mouth agape,

her eyes fixed and letting fall her glass. They all followed the direction of her gaze.

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

screaming of terror, then a tumultuous rising from their seats, a jostling, a scrimmage and a wild rush to the

door at the farther end. Chairs fell over, the men knocked the women down and walked over them. In two

seconds the room was empty, deserted, and the table, covered with eatables, stood in front of Walter

After some moments of hesitation he climbed in at the window and approached the table. His fierce hunger

caused him to tremble as if he were in a fever, but fear still held him back, numbed him. He listened. The

entire house seemed to shudder. Doors closed, quick steps ran along the floor above. The uneasy Prussian

listened eagerly to these confused sounds. Then he heard dull sounds, as though bodies were falling to the

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

Walter Schnaffs sat down before a clean plate and began to eat. He took great mouthfuls, as if he feared he

might be interrupted before he had swallowed enough. He shovelled the food into his mouth, open like a trap,

with both hands, and chunks of food went into his stomach, swelling out his throat as it passed down. Now

and then he stopped, almost ready to burst like a stoppedup pipe. Then he would take the cider jug and wash

He emptied all the plates, all the dishes and all the bottles. Then, intoxicated with drink and food, besotted,

red in the face, shaken by hiccoughs, his mind clouded and his speech thick, he unbuttoned his uniform in

order to breathe or he could not have taken a step. His eyes closed, his mind became torpid; he leaned his

heavy forehead on his folded arms on the table and gradually lost all consciousness of things and events.

The last quarter of the moon above the trees in the park shed a faint light on the landscape. It was the chill

Numerous silent shadows glided among the trees and occasionally a blade of steel gleamed in the shadow as

The quiet chateau stood there in dark outline. Only two windows were still lighted up on the ground floor.

And in an instant the doors, shutters and window panes fell in beneath a wave of men who rushed in,

breaking, destroying everything, and took the house by storm. In a moment fifty soldiers, armed to the teeth,

bounded into the kitchen, where Walter Schnaffs was peacefully sleeping, and placing to his breast fifty

loaded rifles, they overturned him, rolled him on the floor, seized him and tied his head and feet together.

He gasped in amazement, too besotted to understand, perplexed, bruised and wild with fear.

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

He was raised from the floor, tied in a chair and examined with lively curiosity by his victors, who were

blowing like whales. Several of them sat down, done up with excitement and fatigue.

"Colonel, the enemy has escaped; several seem to have been wounded. We are in possession."

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

"After a desperate encounter the Prussians were obliged to beat a retreat, carrying with them their dead and

wounded, the number of whom is estimated at fifty men. Several were taken prisoners."

"We will retire in good order," replied the colonel, "to avoid having to return and make another attack with

The column drew up in line in the darkness beneath the walls of the chateau and filed out, a guard of six

soldiers with revolvers in their hands surrounding Walter Schnaffs, who was firmly bound.

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

At daybreak they arrived at the district of La RocheOysel, whose national guard had accomplished this feat

The uneasy and excited inhabitants were expecting them. When they saw the prisoner's helmet tremendous

shouts arose. The women raised their 10 arms in wonder, the old people wept. An old grandfather threw his

At length they reached the town hall. The prison was opened and Walter Schnaffs, freed from his bonds, cast

Then, in spite of the indigestion that had been troubling him for some time, the Prussian, wild with joy, began

to dance about, to dance frantically, throwing out his arms and legs and uttering wild shouts until he fell

That was how the Chateau de Charnpignet was taken from the enemy after only six hours of occupation.

Colonel Ratier, a cloth merchant, who had led the assault at the head of a body of the national guard of La

"A fearful accident has thrown our seafaring population, which has suffered so much in the last two years,

into the greatest consternation. The fishing smack commanded by Captain Javel, on entering the harbor was

"In spite of the efforts of the life boat and the shooting of life lines from the shore four sailors and the cabin

If the poor man tossed about in the waves and dead, perhaps, beneath his wrecked boat, is the one I am

thinking of, he took part, just eighteen years ago, in another tragedy, terrible and simple as are all these

The trawling smack is the ideal fishing boat. So solidly built that it fears no weather, with a round bottom,

tossed about unceasingly on the waves like a cork, always on top, always thrashed by the harsh salt winds of

the English Channel, it ploughs the sea unweariedly with bellying sail, dragging along at its side a huge

trawling net, which scours the depths of the ocean, and detaches and gathers in all the animals asleep in the

rocks, the flat fish glued to the sand, the heavy crabs with their curved claws, and the lobsters with their

When the breeze is fresh and the sea choppy, the boat starts in to trawl. The net is fastened all along a big log

of wood clamped with iron and is let down by two ropes on pulleys at either end of the boat. And the boat,

driven by the wind and the tide, draws along this apparatus which ransacks and plunders the depths of the sea.

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

But presently a wind sprang up, and a hurricane obliged the smack to run to shore. She gained the English

coast, but the high sea broke against the rocks and dashed on the beach, making it impossible to go into port,

The smack started off again, riding on the waves, tossed, shaken, dripping, buffeted by masses of water, but

game in spite of everything; accustomed to this boisterous weather, which sometimes kept it roving between

At length the hurricane calmed down just as they were in the open, and although the sea was still high the

So it was lifted overboard, and two men in the bows and two in the stern began to unwind the ropes that held

it. It suddenly touched bottom, but a big wave made the boat heel, and Javel, junior, who was in the bows

directing the lowering of the net, staggered, and his arm was caught in the rope which the shock had slipped

from the pulley for an instant. He made a desperate effort to raise the rope with the other hand, but the net

The man cried out in agony. They all ran to his aid. His brother left the rudder. They all seized the rope,

trying to free the arm it was bruising. But in vain. "We must cut it," said a sailor, and he took from his pocket

But if the rope were cut the trawling net would be lost, and this net was worth money, a great deal of money,

fifteen hundred francs. And it belonged to Javel, senior, who was tenacious of his property.

"No, do not cut, wait, I will luff," he cried, in great distress. And he ran to the helm and turned the rudder.

But the boat scarcely obeyed it, being impeded by the net which kept it from going forward, and prevented

Javel, junior, had sunk on his knees, his teeth clenched, his eyes haggard. He did not utter a word. His brother

They cast anchor, and then began to turn the capstan to loosen the moorings of the net. They loosened them at

Young Javel seemed like an idiot. They took off his jersey and saw a horrible sight, a mass of flesh from

which the blood spurted as if from a pump. Then the young man looked at his arm and murmured: "Foutu"

Then, as the blood was making a pool on the deck of the boat, one of the sailors cried: "He will bleed to

So they took a cord, a thick, brown, tarry cord, and twisting it around the arm above the wound, tightened it

with all their might. The blood ceased to spurt by slow degrees, and, presently, stopped altogether.

Young Javel rose, his arm hanging at his side. He took hold of it with the other hand, raised it, turned it over,

shook it. It was all mashed, the bones broken, the muscles alone holding it together. He looked at it sadly,

reflectively. Then he sat down on a folded sail and his comrades advised him to keep wetting the arm

They placed a pail of water beside him, and every few minutes he dipped a glass into it and bathed the

"You would be better in the cabin," said his brother. He went down, but came up again in an hour, not caring

to be alone. And, besides, he preferred the fresh air. He sat down again on his sail and began to bathe his arm.

They made a good haul. The broad fish with their white bellies lay beside him, quivering in the throes of

As they were about to return to Boulogne the wind sprang up anew, and the little boat resumed its mad

Night came on. The sea ran high until dawn. As the sun rose the English coast was again visible, but, as the

weather had abated a little, they turned back towards the French coast, tacking as they went.

Towards evening Javel, junior, called his comrades and showed them some black spots, all the horrible

They brought some salt water and poured it on the wound. The injured man became livid, ground his teeth

Then he began to cut off his arm. He cut gently, carefully, severing al the tendons with this blade that was

sharp as a razor. And, presently, there was only a stump left. He gave a deep sigh and said:

He seemed relieved and breathed loud. He then began again to pour water on the stump of arm that remained.

When the day broke, Javel, junior, took the severed portion of his arm and examined it for a long time.

Gangrene had set in. His comrades also examined it and handed it from one to the other, feeling it, turning it

"Oh, no! Oh, no! I don't want to. It belongs to me, does it not, as it is my arm?"

"It will putrefy, just the same," said the older brother. Then an idea came to the injured man. In order to

preserve the fish when the boat was long at sea, they packed it in salt, in barrels. He asked:

Then they emptied one of the barrels, which was full from the haul of the last few days; and right at the

bottom of the barrel they laid the detached arm. They covered it with salt, and then put back the fish one by

The wind was still boisterous. They tacked within sight of Boulogne until the following morning at ten

o'clock. Young Javel continued to bathe his wound. From time to time he rose and walked from one end to

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

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

ordered the patient to rest. But Javel would not go to bed until he got back his severed arm, and he returned at

It was emptied before him and he seized the arm, which was well preserved in the pickle, had shrunk and was

freshened. He wrapped it up in a towel he had brought for the purpose and took it home.

His wife and children looked for a long time at this fragment of their father, feeling the fingers, and removing

the grains of salt that were under the nails. Then they sent for a carpenter to make a little coffin.

The next day the entire crew of the trawling smack followed the funeral of the detached arm. The two

brothers, side by side, led the procession; the parish beadle carried the corpse under his arm.

Javel, junior, gave up the sea. He obtained a small position on the dock, and when he subsequently talked

"If my brother had been willing to cut away the net, I should still have my arm, that is sure. But he was

Great misfortunes do not affect me very much, said John Bridelle, an old bachelor who passed for a sceptic. I

have seen war at quite close quarters; I walked across corpses without any feeling of pity. The great brutal

facts of nature, or of humanity, may call forth cries of horror or indignation, but do not cause us that

tightening of the heart, that shudder that goes down your spine at sight of certain little heartrending episodes.

The greatest sorrow that anyone can experience is certainly the loss of a child, to a mother; and the loss of his

mother, to a man. It is intense, terrible, it rends your heart and upsets your mind; but one is healed of these

shocks, just as large bleeding wounds become healed. Certain meetings, certain things half perceived, or

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

which suddenly unclose to us the mysterious door of moral suffering, complicated, incurable; all the deeper

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

they appear almost factitious, leave in our souls a sort of trail of sadness, a taste of bitterness, a feeling of

I have always present to my mind two or three things that others would surely not have noticed, but which

You might not perhaps understand the emotion that I retained from these hasty impressions. I will tell you

one of them. She was very old, but as lively as a young girl. It may be that my imagination alone is

I am fifty. I was young then and studying law. I was rather sad, somewhat of a dreamer, full of a pessimistic

philosophy and did not care much for noisy cafes, boisterous companions, or stupid girls. I rose early and one

of my chief enjoyments was to walk alone about eight o'clock in the morning in the nursery garden of the

You people never knew that nursery garden. It was like a forgotten garden of the last century, as pretty as the

gentle smile of an old lady. Thick hedges divided the narrow regular paths,peaceful paths between two

walls of carefully trimmed foliage. The gardener's great shears were pruning unceasingly these leafy

partitions, and here and there one came across beds of flowers, lines of little trees looking like schoolboys out

An entire corner of this charming spot was in habited by bees. Their straw hives skillfully arranged at

distances on boards had their entrancesas large as the opening of a thimbleturned towards the sun, and

all along the paths one encountered these humming and gilded flies, the true masters of this peaceful spot, the

I came there almost every morning. I sat down on a bench and read. Sometimes I let my book fall on my

knees, to dream, to listen to the life of Paris around me, and to enjoy the infinite repose of these old

But I soon perceived that I was not the only one to frequent this spot as soon as the gates were opened, and I

He wore shoes with silver buckles, kneebreeches, a snuffcolored frock coat, a lace jabot, and an outlandish

gray hat with wide brim and long haired surface that might have come out of the ark.

He was thin, very thin, angular, grimacing and smiling. His bright eyes were restless beneath his eyelids

which blinked continuously. He always carried in his hand a superb cane with a gold knob, which must have

This good man astonished me at first, then caused me the intensest interest. I watched him through the leafy

walls, I followed him at a distance, stopping at a turn in the hedge so as not to be seen.

And one morning when he thought he was quite alone, he began to make the most remarkable motions. First

he would give some little springs, then make a bow; then, with his slim legs, he would give a lively spring in

the air, clapping his feet as he did so, and then turn round cleverly, skipping and frisking about in a comical

manner, smiling as if he had an audience, twisting his poor little puppetlike body, bowing pathetic and

He stopped suddenly, advanced as actors do on the stage, then bowed and retreated with gracious smiles, and

kissing his hand as actors do, his trembling hand, to the two rows of trimmed bushes.

After that I never lost sight of him, and each morning he began anew his outlandish exercises.

I was wildly anxious to speak to him. I decided to risk it, and one day, after greeting him, I said:

A week later we were friends and I knew his history. He had been a dancing master at the opera, in the time

of Louis XV. His beautiful cane was a present from the Comte de Clermont. And when we spoke about

"I married La Castris, monsieur. I will introduce you to her if you wish it, but she does not get here till later.

This garden, you see, is our delight and our life. It is all that remains of former days. It seems as though we

could not exist if we did not have it. It is old and distingue, is it not? I seem to breathe an air here that has not

changed since I was young. My wife and I pass all our afternoons here, but I come in the morning because I

As soon as I had finished luncheon I returned to the Luxembourg, and presently perceived my friend offering

his arm ceremoniously to a very old little lady dressed in black, to whom he introduced me. It was La Castris,

the great dancer, beloved by princes, beloved by the king, beloved by all that century of gallantry that seems

We sat down on a bench. It was the month of May. An odor of flowers floated in the neat paths; a hot sun

glided its rays between the branches and covered us with patches of light. The black dress of La Castris

"The minuet, monsieur, is the queen of dances, and the dance of queens, do you understand? Since there is no

And he began in a pompous manner a long dithyrambic eulogy which I could not understand. I wanted to

have the steps, the movements, the positions, explained to me. He became confused, was amazed at his

Then suddenly, turning to his old companion who had remained silent and serious, he said:

"Elise, would you likesaywould you like, it would be very nice of you, would you like to show this

She turned eyes uneasily in all directions, then rose without saying a word and took her position opposite

They advanced and retreated with childlike grimaces, smiling, swinging each other, bowing, skipping about

like two automaton dolls moved by some old mechanical contrivance, somewhat damaged, but made by a

And I looked at them, my heart filled with extraordinary emotions, my soul touched with an indescribable

melancholy. I seemed to see before me a pathetic and comical apparition, the outofdate ghost of a former

They suddenly stopped. They had finished all the figures of the dance. For some seconds they stood opposite

each other, smiling in an astonishing manner. Then they fell on each other's necks sobbing.

I left for the provinces three days later. I never saw them again. When I returned to Paris, two years later, the

nursery had been destroyed. What became of them, deprived of the dear garden of former days, with its

Are they dead? Are they wandering among modern streets like hopeless exiles? Are they dancinggrotesque

spectresa fantastic minuet in the moonlight, amid the cypresses of a cemetery, along the pathways

Their memory haunts me, obsesses me, torments me, remains with me like a wound. Why? I do not know.

The two old friends were walking in the garden in bloom, where spring was bringing everything to life.

One was a senator, the other a member of the French Academy, both serious men, full of very logical but

They talked first of politics, exchanging opinions; not on ideas, but on men, personalities in this regard taking

the predominance over ability. Then they recalled some memories. Then they walked along in silence,

A large bed of wallflowers breathed out a delicate sweetness. A mass of flowers of all species and color flung

their fragrance to the breeze, while a cytisus covered with yellow clusters scattered its fine pollen abroad, a

golden cloud, with an odor of honey that bore its balmy seed across space, similar to the sachetpowders of

The senator stopped, breathed in the cloud of floating pollen, looked at the fertile shrub, yellow as the sun,

"When one considers that these imperceptible fragrant atoms will create existences at a hundred leagues from

here, will send a thrill through the fibres and sap of female trees and produce beings with roots, growing from

a germ, just as we do, mortal like ourselves, and who will be replaced by other beings of the same order, like

And, standing in front of the brilliant cytisus, whose live pollen was shaken off by each breath of air, the

"Ah, old fellow, if you had to keep count of all your children you would be mightily embarrassed. Here is one

who generates freely, and then lets them go without a pang and troubles himself no more about them."

"Yes, I do not deny it; we let them go sometimes," resumed the senator, "but we are aware that we do, and

"No, that is not what I mean," said the other, shaking his head. "You see, my friend, that there is scarcely a

man who has not some children that he does not know, children'father unknown'whom he has generated

"If we had to keep account of our amours, we should be just as embarrassed as this cytisus which you

"From eighteen to forty years, in fact, counting in every chance cursory acquaintanceship, we may well say

"Well, then, my friend, among this number can you be sure that you have not had children by at least one of

them, and that you have not in the streets, or in the bagnio, some blackguard of a son who steals from and

murders decent people, i.e., ourselves; or else a daughter in some disreputable place, or, if she has the good

"Consider, also, that almost all those whom we call 'prostitutes' have one or two children of whose paternal

parentage they are ignorant, generated by chance at the price of ten or twenty francs. In every business there

is profit and loss. These wildings constitute the 'loss' in their profession. Who generated them? YouIwe

all did, the men called 'gentlemen'! They are the consequences of our jovial little dinners, of our gay

evenings, of those hours when our comfortable physical being impels us to chance liaisons.

"Thieves, marauders, all these wretches, in fact, are our children. And that is better for us than if we were

"I have in my mind a very horrible story that I will relate to you. It has caused me incessant remorse, and,

further than that, a continual doubt, a disquieting uncertainty, that, at times, torments me frightfully.

"When I was twentyfive I undertook a walking tour through Brittany with one of my friends, now a member

"After walking steadily for fifteen or twenty days and visiting the CotesduNord and part of Finistere we

reached Douarnenez. From there we went without halting to the wild promontory of Raz by the bay of Les

Trepaases, and passed the night in a village whose name ends in 'of.' The next morning a strange lassitude

kept my friend in bed; I say bed from habit, for our couch consisted simply of two bundles of straw.

"It would never do to be ill in this place. So I made him get up, and we reached Andierne about four or five

"The following day he felt a little better, and we set out again. But on the road he was seized with intolerable

"Here, at least, there was an inn. My friend went to bed, and the doctor, who had been sent for from Quimper,

"Do you know Pont Labbe? No? Well, then, it is the most Breton of all this Breton Brittany, which extends

from the promontory of Raz to the Morbihan, of this land which contains the essence of the Breton manners,

legends and customs. Even today this corner of the country has scarcely changed. I say 'even today,' for I

"An old chateau laves the walls of its towers in a great melancholy pond, melancholy and frequented by

flights of wild birds. It has an outlet in a river on which boats can navigate as far as the town. In the narrow

streets with their oldtime houses the men wear big hats, embroidered waistcoats and four coats, one on top

of the other; the inside one, as large as your hand, barely covering the shoulderblades, and the outside one

"The girls, tall, handsome and fresh have their bosoms crushed in a cloth bodice which makes an armor,

compresses them, not allowing one even to guess at their robust and tortured neck. They also wear a strange

headdress. On their temples two bands embroidered in colors frame their face, inclosing the hair, which falls

in a shower at the back of their heads, and is then turned up and gathered on top of the head under a singular

"The servant at our inn was eighteen at most, with very blue eyes, a pale blue with two tiny black pupils,

short teeth close together, which she showed continually when she laughed, and which seemed strong enough

"She did not know a word of French, speaking only Breton, as did most of her companions.

"As my friend did not improve much, and although he had no definite malady, the doctor forbade him to

continue his journey yet, ordering complete rest. I spent my days with him, and the little maid would come in

"I teased her a little, which seemed to amuse her, but we did not chat, of course, as we could not understand

"But one night, after I had stayed quite late with my friend and was going back to my room, I passed the girl,

who was going to her room. It was just opposite my open door, and, without reflection, and more for fun than

anything else, I abruptly seized her round the waist, and before she recovered from her astonishment I had

thrown her down and locked her in my room. She looked at me, amazed, excited, terrified, not daring to cry

out for fear of a scandal and of being probably driven out, first by her employers and then, perhaps, by her

"I did it as a joke at first. She defended herself bravely, and at the first chance she ran to the door, drew back

"I scarcely saw her for several days. She would not let me come near her. But when my friend was cured and

we were to get out on our travels again I saw her coming into my room about midnight the night before our

"She threw herself into my arms and embraced me passionately, giving me all the assurances of tenderness

and despair that a woman can give when she does not know a word of our language.

"A week later I had forgotten this adventure, so common and frequent when one is travelling, the inn servants

"But in 1876 I revisited it by chance during a trip into Brittany, which I made in order to look up some data

"Nothing seemed changed. The chateau still laved its gray wall in the pond outside the little town; the inn was

the same, though it had been repaired, renovated and looked more modern. As I entered it I was received by

two young Breton girls of eighteen, fresh and pretty, bound up in their tight cloth bodices, with their silver

"It was about six o'clock in the evening. I sat down to dinner, and as the host was assiduous in waiting on me

"'Did you know the former proprietors of this house? I spent about ten days here thirty years ago. I am talking

"Then I told him why we had stayed over at that time, how my comrade had been delayed by illness. He did

"'Oh, I recollect perfectly. I was about fifteen or sixteen. You slept in the room at the end and your friend in

"It was only then that the recollection of the little maid came vividly to my mind. I asked : 'Do you remember

a pretty little servant who was then in your father's employ, and who had, if my memory does not deceive me,

"And, pointing to the courtyard where a thin, lame man was stirring up the manure, he added:

"'He is not handsome and does not look much like his mother. No doubt he looks like his father.'

"'That is very possible,' replied the innkeeper; 'but we never knew whose child it was. She died without

telling any one, and no one here knew of her having a beau. Every one was hugely astonished when they

"A sort of unpleasant chill came over me, one of those painful surface wounds that affect us like the shadow

of an impending sorrow. And I looked at the man in the yard. He had just drawn water for the horses and was

carrying two buckets, limping as he walked, with a painful effort of his shorter leg. His clothes were ragged,

he was hideously dirty, with long yellow hair, so tangled that it looked like strands of rope falling down at

"'He is not worth much,' continued the innkeeper; 'we have kept him for charity's sake. Perhaps he would

have turned out better if he had been brought up like other folks. But what could one do, monsieur? No

father, no mother, no money! My parents took pity on him, but he was not their child, you understand.'

"I slept in my old room, and all night long I thought of this frightful stableman, saying to myself: 'Supposing

it is my own son? Could I have caused that girl's death and procreated this being? It was quite possible!'

"I resolved to speak to this man and to find out the exact date of his birth. A variation of two months would

"I sent for him the next day. But he could not speak French. He looked as if he could not understand

anything, being absolutely ignorant of his age, which I had inquired of him through one of the maids. He

stood before me like an idiot, twirling his hat in 'his knotted, disgusting hands, laughing stupidly, with

"The landlord, appearing on the scene, went to look for the birth certificate of this wretched being. He was

born eight months and twenty six days after my stay at Pont Labbe, for I recollect perfectly that we reached

Lorient on the fifteenth of August. The certificate contained this description: 'Father unknown.' The mother

"Then my heart began to beat rapidly. I could not utter a word, for I felt as if I were choking. I looked at this

animal whose long yellow hair reminded me of a straw heap, and the beggar, embarrassed by my gaze,

"All day long I wandered beside the little river, giving way to painful reflections. But what was the use of

reflection? I could be sure of nothing. For hours and hours I weighed all the pros and cons in favor of or

against the probability of my being the father, growing nervous over inexplicable suppositions, only to return

incessantly to the same horrible uncertainty, then to the still more atrocious conviction that this man was my

I lay awake for a long time, and when I finally fell asleep I was haunted by horrible visions. I saw this laborer

laughing in my face and calling me 'papa.' Then he changed into a dog and bit the calves of my legs, and no

matter how fast I ran he still followed me, and instead of barking, talked and reviled me. Then he appeared

before my colleagues at the Academy, who had assembled to decide whether I was really his father; and one

of them cried out: 'There can be no doubt about it! See how he resembles him.' And, indeed, I could see that

this monster looked like me. And I awoke with this idea fixed in my mind and with an insane desire to see the

"I joined him as he was going to mass (it was Sunday) and I gave him five francs as I gazed at him anxiously.

He began to laugh in an idiotic manner, took the money, and then, embarrassed afresh at my gaze, he ran off,

"My day passed in the same distress of mind as on the previous night. I sent for the landlord, and, with the

greatest caution, skill and tact, I told him that I was interested in this poor creature, so abandoned by every

"But the man replied: 'Oh, do not think of it, monsieur; he is of no account; you will only cause yourself

annoyance. I employ him to clean out the stable, and that is all he can do. I give him his board and let him

sleep with the horses. He needs nothing more. If you have an old pair of trousers, you might give them to

"The poor wretch came home that evening frightfully drunk, came near setting fire to the house, killed a

horse by hitting it with a pickaxe, and ended up by lying down to sleep in the mud in the midst of the pouring

"They begged me next day not to give him any more money. Brandy drove him crazy, and as soon as he had

two sous in his pocket he would spend it in drink. The landlord added: 'Giving him money is like trying to

kill him.' The man had never, never in his life had more than a few centimes, thrown to him by travellers, and

"I spent several hours in my room with an open book before me which I pretended to read, but in reality

looking at this animal, my son! my son! trying to discover if he looked anything like me. After careful

scrutiny I seemed to recognize a similarity in the lines of the forehead and the root of the nose, and I was

soon convinced that there was a resemblance, concealed by the difference in garb and the man's hideous head

"I could not stay here any longer without arousing suspicion, and I went away, my heart crushed, leaving

"For six years now I have lived with this idea in my mind, this horrible uncertainty, this abominable

suspicion. And each year an irresistible force takes me back to Pont Labbe. Every year I condemn myself to

the torture of seeing this animal raking the manure, imagining that he resembles me, and endeavoring, always

vainly, to render him some assistance. And each year I return more uncertain, more tormented, more worried.

"I tried to have him taught, but he is a hopeless idiot. I tried to make his life less hard. He is an irreclaimable

drunkard, and spends in drink all the money one gives him, and knows enough to sell his new clothes in order

"I tried to awaken his master's sympathy, so that he should look after him, offering to pay him for doing so.

The innkeeper, finally surprised, said, very wisely: 'All that you do for him, monsieur, will only help to

destroy him. He must be kept like a prisoner. As soon as he has any spare time, or any comfort, he becomes

wicked. If you wish to do good, there is no lack of abandoned children, but select one who will appreciate

"If I allowed the slightest suspicion of the doubts that tortured me to escape, this idiot would assuredly

become cunning, in order to blackmail me, to compromise me and ruin me. He would call out 'papa,' as in my

"And I said to myself that I had killed the mother and lost this atrophied creature, this larva of the stable, born

and raised amid the manure, this man who, if brought up like others, would have been like others.

"And you cannot imagine what a strange, embarrassed and intolerable feeling comes over me when he stands

before me and I reflect that he came from myself, that he belongs to me through the intimate bond that links

father and son, that, thanks to the terrible law of heredity, he is my own self in a thousand ways, in his blood

and his flesh, and that he has even the same germs of disease, the same leaven of emotions.

"I have an incessant restless, distressing longing to see him, and the sight of him causes me intense suffering,

as I look down from my window and watch him for hours removing and carting the horse manure, saying to

"And I sometimes feel an irresistible longing to embrace him. I have never even touched his dirty hand."

The academician was silent. His companion, a tactful man, murmured: "Yes, indeed, we ought to take a

A gust of wind passing through the tree shook its yellow clusters, enveloping in a fragrant and delicate mist

The senator added: "It is good to be twentyfive and even to have children like that."

"Here, my friend," I said to Labarbe, "you have just repeated those five words, that pig of a Morin. Why on

Labarbe, who is a deputy, looked at me with his owllike eyes and said: "Do you mean to say that you do not

know Morin's story and you come from La Rochelle?" I was obliged to declare that I did not know Morin's

"You knew Morin, did you not, and you remember his large linendraper's shop on the Quai de la Rochelle?"

"Well, then. You must know that in 1862 or '63 Morin went to spend a fortnight in Paris for pleasure; or for

his pleasures, but under the pretext of renewing his stock, and you also know what a fortnight in Paris means

to a country shopkeeper; it fires his blood. The theatre every evening, women's dresses rustling up against

you and continual excitement; one goes almost mad with it. One sees nothing but dancers in tights, actresses

in very low dresses, round legs, fat shoulders, all nearly within reach of one's hands, without daring, or being

able, to touch them, and one scarcely tastes food. When one leaves the city one's heart is still all in a flutter

and one's mind still exhilarated by a sort of longing for kisses which tickles one's lips.

"Morin was in that condition when he took his ticket for La Rochelle by the eightforty night express. As he

was walking up and down the waitingroom at the station he stopped suddenly in front of a young lady who

was kissing an old one. She had her veil up, and Morin murmured with delight: 'By Jove what a pretty

"When she had said 'goodby' to the old lady she went into the waiting room, and Morin followed her; then

she went on the platform and Morin still followed her; then she got into an empty carriage, and he again

followed her. There were very few travellers on the express. The engine whistled and the train started. They

were alone. Morin devoured her with his eyes. She appeared to be about nineteen or twenty and was fair, tall,

with a bold look. She wrapped a railway rug round her and stretched herself on the seat to sleep.

"Morin asked himself: 'I wonder who she is?' And a thousand conjectures, a thousand projects went through

his head. He said to himself: 'So many adventures are told as happening on railway journeys that this may be

one that is going to present itself to me. Who knows? A piece of good luck like that happens very suddenly,

and perhaps I need only be a little venturesome. Was it not Danton who said: "Audacity, more audacity and

always audacity"? If it was not Danton it was Mirabeau, but that does not matter. But then I have no audacity,

and that is the difficulty. Oh! If one only knew, if one could only read people's minds! I will bet that every

day one passes by magnificent opportunities without knowing it, though a gesture would be enough to let me

"Then he imagined to himself combinations which conducted him to triumph. He pictured some chivalrous

deed or merely some slight service which he rendered her, a lively, gallant conversation which ended in a

"But he could find no opening, had no pretext, and he waited for some fortunate circumstance, with his heart

beating and his mind topsyturvy. The night passed and the pretty girl still slept, while Morin was meditating

his own fall. The day broke and soon the first ray of sunlight appeared in the sky, a long, clear ray which

shone on the face of the sleeping girl and woke her. She sat up, looked at the country, then at Morin and

smiled. She smiled like a happy woman, with an engaging and bright look, and Morin trembled. Certainly

that smile was intended for him; it was discreet invitation, the signal which he was waiting for. That smile

meant to say: 'How stupid, what a ninny, what a dolt, what a donkey you are, to have sat there on your seat

"'Just look at me, am I not charming? And you have sat like that for the whole night, when you have been

"She was still smiling as she looked at him; she even began to laugh; and he lost his head trying to find

something suitable to say, no matter what. But he could think of nothing, nothing, and then, seized with a

'So much the worse, I will risk everything,' and suddenly, without the slightest warning, he went toward her,

his arms extended, his lips protruding, and, seizing her in his arms, he kissed her.

"She sprang up immediately with a bound, crying out: 'Help! help!' and screaming with terror; and then she

opened the carriage door and waved her arm out, mad with terror and trying to jump out, while Morin, who

was almost distracted and feeling sure that she would throw herself out, held her by the skirt and stammered:

"The train slackened speed and then stopped. Two guards rushed up at the young woman's frantic signals.

She threw herself into their arms, stammering: 'That man wantedwantedtoto' And then she fainted.

"They were at Mauze station, and the gendarme on duty arrested Morin. When the victim of his indiscreet

admiration had regained her consciousness, she made her charge against him, and the police drew it up. The

poor linen draper did not reach home till night, with a prosecution hanging over him for an outrage to morals

"At that time I was editor of the Fanal des Charentes, and I used to meet Morin every day at the Cafe du

Commerce, and the day after his adventure. he came to see me, as he did not know what to do. I did not hide

my opinion from him, but said to him: 'You are no better than a pig. No decent man behaves like that.'

"He cried. His wife had given him a beating, and he foresaw his trade ruined, his name dragged through the

mire and dishonored, his friends scandalized and taking no notice of him. In the end he excited my pity, and I

sent for my colleague, Rivet, a jocular but very sensible little man, to give us his advice.

"He advised me to see the public prosecutor, who was a friend of mine, and so I sent Morin home and went to

call on the magistrate. He told me that the woman who had been insulted was a young lady, Mademoiselle

Henriette Bonnel, who had just received her certificate as governess in Paris and spent her holidays with her

uncle and aunt, who were very respectable tradespeople in Mauze. What made Morin's case all the more

serious was that the uncle had lodged a complaint, but the public official had consented to let the matter drop

"I went back to Morin's and found him in bed, ill with excitement and distress. His wife, a tall rawboned

woman with a beard, was abusing him continually, and she showed me into the room, shouting at me: 'So you

have come to see that pig of a Morin. Well, there he is, the darling!' And she planted herself in front of the

bed, with her hands on her hips. I told him how matters stood, and he begged me to go and see the girl's uncle

and aunt. It was a delicate mission, but I undertook it, and the poor devil never ceased repeating: 'I assure you

"I replied: 'It is all the same; you are nothing but a pig.' And I took a thousand francs which he gave me to

employ as I thought best, but as I did not care to venture to her uncle's house alone, I begged Rivet to go with

me, which he agreed to do on condition that we went immediately, for he had some urgent business at La

Rochelle that afternoon. So two hours later we rang at the door of a pretty country house. An attractive girl

came and opened the door to us assuredly the young lady in question, and I said to Rivet in a low voice:

"The uncle, Monsieur Tonnelet, subscribed to the Fanal, and was a fervent political coreligionist of ours. He

received us with open arms and congratulated us and wished us joy; he was delighted at having the two

editors in his house, and Rivet whispered to me: 'I think we shall be able to arrange the matter of that pig of a

"The niece had left the room and I introduced the delicate subject. I waved the spectre of scandal before his

eyes; I accentuated the inevitable depreciation which the young lady would suffer if such an affair became

known, for nobody would believe in a simple kiss, and the good man seemed undecided, but he could not

make up his mind about anything without his wife, who would not be in until late that evening. But suddenly

he uttered an exclamation of triumph: 'Look here, I have an excellent idea; I will keep you here to dine and

"Rivet resisted at first, but the wish to extricate that pig of a Morin decided him, and we accepted the

invitation, and the uncle got up radiant, called his niece and proposed that we should take a stroll in his

grounds, saying: 'We will leave serious matters until the morning.' Rivet and he began to talk politics, while I

soon found myself lagging a little behind with 'the girl who was really charmingcharmingand with the

greatest precaution I began to speak to her about her adventure and try to make her my ally. She did not,

however, appear the least confused, and listened to me like a person who was enjoying the whole thing very

"I said to her: 'Just think, mademoiselle, how unpleasant it will be for you. You will have to appear in court,

to encounter malicious looks, to speak before everybody and to recount that unfortunate occurrence in the

railway carriage in public. Do you not think, between ourselves, that it would have been much better for you

to have put that dirty scoundrel back in his place without calling for assistance, and merely to change your

carriage?' She began to laugh and replied: 'What you say is quite true, but what could I do? I was frightened,

and when one is frightened one does not stop to reason with one's self. As soon as I realized the situation I

was very sorry, that I had called out, but then it was too late. You must also remember that the idiot threw

himself upon me like a madman, without saying a word and looking like a lunatic. I did not even know what

"She looked me full in the face without being nervous or intimidated and I said to myself: 'She is a queer sort

of girl, that: I can quite see how that pig Morin came to make a mistake,' and I went on jokingly: 'Come,

mademoiselle, confess that he was excusable, for, after all, a man cannot find himself opposite such a pretty

"She laughed more than ever and showed her teeth and said: 'Between the desire and the act, monsieur, there

is room for respect.' It was an odd expression to use, although it was not very clear, and I asked abruptly:

'Well, now, suppose I were to kiss you, what would you do?' She stopped to look at me from head to foot and

"I knew perfectly well, by Jove, that it was not the same thing at all, as everybody in the neighborhood called

me 'Handsome Labarbe'I was thirty years old in those daysbut I asked her: 'And why, pray?' She

shrugged her shoulders and replied: 'Well! because you are not so stupid as he is.' And then she added,

looking at me slyly: 'Nor so ugly, either: And before she could make a movement to avoid me I had

implanted a hearty kiss on her cheek. She sprang aside, but it was too late, and then she said: 'Well, you are

"I put on a humble look and said in a low voice: 'Oh, mademoiselle! as for me, if I long for one thing more

than another it is to be summoned before a magistrate for the same reason as Morin.'

"'Why?' she asked. And, looking steadily at her, I replied: 'Because you are one of the most beautiful

creatures living; because it would be an honor and a glory for me to have wished to offer you violence, and

because people would have said, after seeing you: "Well, Labarbe has richly deserved what he has got, but he

"She began to laugh heartily again and said: 'How funny you are!' And she had not finished the word 'funny'

before I had her in my arms and was kissing her ardently wherever I could find a place, on her forehead, on

her eyes, on her lips occasionally, on her cheeks, all over her head, some part of which she was obliged to

leave exposed, in spite of herself, to defend the others; but at last she managed to release herself, blushing

and angry. 'You are very unmannerly, monsieur,' she said, 'and I am sorry I listened to you.'

"I took her hand in some confusion and stammered out: 'I beg your pardon. I beg your pardon, mademoiselle.

I have offended you; I have acted like a brute! Do not be angry with me for what I have done. If you knew'

I vainly sought for some excuse, and in a few moments she said: 'There is nothing for me to know, monsieur.'

"She was really surprised and raised her eyes to look at me, and I went on: 'Yes, mademoiselle, and pray

listen to me. I do not know Morin, and I do not care anything about him. It does not matter to me the least if

he is committed for trial and locked up meanwhile. I saw you here last year, and I was so taken with you that

the thought of you has never left me since, and it does not matter to me whether you believe me or not. I

thought you adorable, and the remembrance of you took such a hold on me that I longed to see you again, and

so I made use of that fool Morin as a pretext, and here I am. Circumstances have made me exceed the due

"She looked at me to see if I was in earnest and was ready to smile again. Then she murmured: 'You

humbug!' But I raised my hand and said in a sincere voice (and I really believe that I was sincere): 'I swear to

you that I am speaking the truth,' and she replied quite simply: 'Don't talk nonsense!'

"We were alone, quite alone, as Rivet and her uncle had disappeared down a sidewalk, and I made her a real

declaration of love, while I squeezed and kissed her hands, and she listened to it as to something new and

agreeable, without exactly knowing how much of it she was to believe, while in the end I felt agitated, and at

last really myself believed what I said. I was pale, anxious and trembling, and I gently put my arm round her

waist and spoke to her softly, whispering into the little curls over her ears. She seemed in a trance, so

"Then her hand touched mine, and she pressed it, and I gently squeezed her waist with a trembling, and

gradually firmer, grasp. She did not move now, and I touched her cheek with my lips, and suddenly without

seeking them my lips met hers. It was a long, long kiss, and it would have lasted longer still if I had not heard

a hm! hm! just behind me, at which she made her escape through the bushes, and turning round I saw Rivet

coming toward me, and, standing in the middle of the path, he said without even smiling: 'So that is the way

you settle the affair of that pig of a Morin.' And I replied conceitedly: 'One does what one can, my dear

fellow. But what about the uncle? How have you got on with him? I will answer for the niece.' 'I have not

"Dinner made me lose my head altogether. I sat beside her, and my hand continually met hers under the

"After dinner we took a walk by moonlight, and I whispered all the tender things I could think of to her. I

held her close to me, kissed her every moment, while her uncle and Rivet were arguing as they walked in

front of us. They went in, and soon a messenger brought a telegram from her aunt, saying that she would not

"'Very well, Henriette,' her uncle said, 'go and show the gentlemen their rooms.' She showed Rivet his first,

and he whispered to me: 'There was no danger of her taking us into yours first.' Then she took me to my

room, and as soon as she was alone with me I took her in my arms again and tried to arouse her emotion, but

when she saw the danger she escaped out of the room, and I retired very much put out and excited and feeling

rather foolish, for I knew that I should not sleep much, and I was wondering how I could have committed

such a mistake, when there was a gentle knock at my door, and on my asking who was there a low voice

"I dressed myself quickly and opened the door, and she came in. 'I forgot to ask you what you take in the

morning,' she said; 'chocolate, tea or coffee?' I put my arms round her impetuously and said, devouring her

"But she freed herself from my arms, blew out my candle and disappeared and left me alone in the dark,

furious, trying to find some matches, and not able to do so. At last I got some and I went into the passage,

"What was I about to do? I did not stop to reason, I only wanted to find her, and I would. I went a few steps

without reflecting, but then I suddenly thought: 'Suppose I should walk into the uncle's room what should I

say?' And I stood still, with my head a void and my heart beating. But in a few moments I thought of an

answer: 'Of course, I shall say that I was looking for Rivet's room to speak to him about an important matter,'

and I began to inspect all the doors, trying to find hers, and at last I took hold of a handle at a venture, turned

it and went in. There was Henriette, sitting on her bed and looking at me in tears. So I gently turned the key,

and going up to her on tiptoe I said: 'I forgot to ask you for something to read, mademoiselle.'

"I was stealthily returning to my room when a rough hand seized me and a voiceit was Rivet's whispered

"At seven o'clock the next morning Henriette herself brought me a cup of chocolate. I never have drunk

anything like it, soft, velvety, perfumed, delicious. I could hardly take away my lips from the cup, and she

had hardly left the room when Rivet came in. He seemed nervous and irritable, like a man who had not slept,

'If you go on like this you will end by spoiling the affair of that pig of a Morin!'

"At eight o'clock the aunt arrived. Our discussion was very short, for they withdrew their complaint, and I left

five hundred francs for the poor of the town. They wanted to keep us for the day, and they arranged an

excursion to go and see some ruins. Henriette made signs to me to stay, behind her parents' back, and I

accepted, but Rivet was determined to go, and though I took him aside and begged and prayed him to do this

for me, he appeared quite exasperated and kept saying to me: 'I have had enough of that pig of a Morin's

"Of course I was obliged to leave also, and it was one of the hardest moments of my life. I could have gone

on arranging that business as long as I lived, and when we were in the railway carriage, after shaking hands

with her in silence, I said to Rivet: 'You are a mere brute!' And he replied: 'My dear fellow, you were

"On getting to the Fanal office, I saw a crowd waiting for us, and as soon as they saw us they all exclaimed:

'Well, have you settled the affair of that pig of a Morin?' All La Rochelle was excited about it, and Rivet, who

had got over his illhumor on the journey, had great difficulty in keeping himself from laughing as he said:

"He was sitting in an easychair with mustard plasters on his legs and cold bandages on his head, nearly dead

with misery. He was coughing with the short cough of a dying man, without any one knowing how he had

caught it, and his wife looked at him like a tigress ready to eat him, and as soon as he saw us he trembled so

violently as to make his hands and knees shake, so I said to him immediately: 'It is all settled, you dirty

"He got up, choking, took my hands and kissed them as if they had belonged to a prince, cried, nearly fainted,

embraced Rivet and even kissed Madame Morin, who gave him such a push as to send him staggering back

into his chair; but he never got over the blow; his mind had been too much upset. In all the country round,

moreover, he was called nothing but 'that pig of a Morin,' and that epithet went through him like a

swordthrust every time he heard it. When a street boy called after him 'Pig!' he turned his head instinctively.

His friends also overwhelmed him with horrible jokes and used to ask him, whenever they were eating ham,

"As for myself, when I was a candidate for the Chamber of Deputies in 1875, I called on the new notary at

Fousserre, Monsieur Belloncle, to solicit his vote, and a tall, handsome and evidently wealthy lady received

me. 'You do not know me again?' she said. And I stammered out: 'Whynomadame.' 'Henriette Bonnel.'

'Ah!' And I felt myself turning pale, while she seemed perfectly at her ease and looked at me with a smile.

"As soon as she had left me alone with her husband he took both my hands, and, squeezing them as if he

meant to crush them, he said: 'I have been intending to go and see you for a long time, my dear sir, for my

wife has very often talked to me about you. I knowyes, I know under what painful circumstances you

made her acquaintance, and I know also how perfectly you behaved, how full of delicacy, tact and devotion

you showed yourself in the affair' He hesitated and then said in a lower tone, as if he had been saying

They called him Saint Anthony, because his name was Anthony, and also, perhaps, because he was a good

fellow, jovial, a lover of practical jokes, a tremendous eater and a heavy drinker and a gay fellow, although he

He was a big peasant of the district of Caux, with a red face, large chest and stomach, and perched on two

He was a widower and lived alone with his two men servants and a maid on his farm, which he conducted

with shrewd economy. He was careful of his own interests, understood business and the raising of cattle, and

farming. His two sons and his three daughters, who had married well, were living in the neighborhood and

came to dine with their father once a month. His vigor of body was famous in all the countryside. "He is as

At the time of the Prussian invasion Saint Anthony, at the wine shop, promised to eat an army, for he was a

braggart, like a true Norman, a bit of a, coward and a blusterer. He banged his fist on the wooden table,

making the cups and the brandy glasses dance, and cried with the assumed wrath of a good fellow, with a

flushed face and a sly look in his eye: "I shall have to eat some of them, nom de Dieu!" He reckoned that the

Prussians would not come as far as Tanneville, but when he heard they were at Rautot he never went out of

the house, and constantly watched the road from the little window of his kitchen, expecting at any moment to

One morning as he was eating his luncheon with the servants the door opened and the mayor of the

commune, Maitre Chicot, appeared, followed by a soldier wearing a black copperpointed helmet. Saint

Anthony bounded to his feet and his servants all looked at him, expecting to see him slash the Prussian. But

"Here is one for you, Saint Anthony. They came last night. Don't do anything foolish, above all things, for

they talked of shooting and burning everything if there is the slightest unpleasantness, I have given you

warning. Give him something to eat; he looks like a good fellow. Goodday. I am going to call on the rest.

Father Anthony, who had turned pale, looked at the Prussian. He was a big, young fellow with plump, white

skin, blue eyes, fair hair, unshaven to his cheek bones, who looked stupid, timid and good. The shrewd

Norman read him at once, and, reassured, he made him a sign to sit down. Then he said: "Will you take some

The stranger did not understand. Anthony then became bolder, and pushing a plateful of soup right under his

The soldier ,answered "Ya," and began to eat greedily, while the farmer, triumphant, feeling he had regained

his reputation, winked his eye at the servants, who were making strange grimaces, what with their terror and

When the Prussian had devoured his soup, Saint Anthony gave him another plateful, which disappeared in

like manner; but he flinched at the third which the farmer tried to insist on his eating, saying: "Come, put that

The soldier, understanding only that they wanted to make him eat all his soup, laughed in a contented

Then Saint Anthony, become quite familiar, tapped him on the stomach, saying: "My, there is plenty in my

pig's belly!" But suddenly he began to writhe with laughter, unable to speak. An idea had struck him which

made him choke with mirth. "That's it, that's it, Saint Anthony and his pig. There's my pig!" And the three

The old fellow was so pleased that he had the brandy brought in, good stuff, 'fil en dix', and treated every one.

They clinked glasses with the Prussian, who clacked his tongue by way of flattery to show that he enjoyed it.

And Saint Anthony exclaimed in his face: "Eh, is not that superfine? You don't get anything like that in your

From that time Father Anthony never went out without his Prussian. He had got what he wanted. This was his

vengeance, the vengeance of an old rogue. And the whole countryside, which was in terror, laughed to split

its sides at Saint Anthony's joke. Truly, there was no one like him when it came to humor. No one but he

He went to see his neighbors every day, arm in arm with his German, whom he introduced in a jovial manner,

tapping him on the shoulder: "See, here is my pig; look and see if he is not growing fat, the animal!"

And the peasants would beam with smiles. "He is so comical, that reckless fellow, Antoine!"

And they all winked at each other, but dared not laugh too loud, for fear the Prussian might finally suspect

they were laughing at him. Anthony, alone growing bolder every day, pinched his thighs, exclaiming,

"Nothing but fat"; tapped him on the back, shouting, "That is all bacon"; lifted him up in his arms as an old

Colossus that could have lifted an anvil, declaring, "He weighs six hundred and no waste."

He had got into the habit of making people offer his "pig" something to eat wherever they went together. This

was the chief pleasure, the great diversion every day. "Give him whatever you please, he will swallow

everything." And they offered the man bread and butter, potatoes, cold meat, chitterlings, which caused the

The soldier, stupid and gentle, ate from politeness, charmed at these attentions, making himself ill rather than

refuse, and he was actually growing fat and his uniform becoming tight for him. This delighted Saint

Anthony, who said: "You know, my pig, that we shall have to have another cage made for you."

They had, however, become the best friends in the world, and when the old fellow went to attend to his

business in the neighborhood the Prussian accompanied him for the simple pleasure of being with him.

The weather was severe; it was freezing hard. The terrible winter of 1870 seemed to bring all the scourges on

Father Antoine, who made provision beforehand, and took advantage of every opportunity, foreseeing that

manure would be scarce for the spring farming, bought from a neighbor who happened to be in need of

money all that he had, and it was agreed that he should go every evening with his cart to get a load.

So every day at twilight he set out for the farm of Haules, half a league distant, always accompanied by his

"pig." And each time it was a festival, feeding the animal. All the neighbors ran over there as they would go

But the soldier began to suspect something, be mistrustful, and when they laughed too loud he would roll his

One evening when he had eaten his fill he refused to swallow another morsel, and attempted to rise to leave

the table. But Saint Anthony stopped him by a turn of the wrist and, placing his two powerful hands on his

A wild burst of laughter broke forth, and Anthony, beaming, picked up his pig, acted as though he were

dressing his wounds, and exclaimed: "Since you will not eat, you shall drink, nom de Dieu!" And they went

The soldier rolled his eyes, which had a wicked expression, but he drank, nevertheless; he drank as long as

they wanted him, and Saint Anthony held his head to the great delight of his companions.

The Norman, red as a tomato, his eyes ablaze, filled up the glasses and clinked, saying: "Here's to you!". And

the Prussian, without speaking a word, poured down one after another glassfuls of cognac.

It was a contest, a battle, a revenge! Who would drink the most, nom d'un nom! They could neither of them

stand any more when the liter was emptied. But neither was conquered. They were tied, that was all. They

They went out staggering and started for home, walking beside the dung cart which was drawn along slowly

Snow began to fall and the moonless night was sadly lighted by this dead whiteness on the plain. The men

began to feel the cold, and this aggravated their intoxication. Saint Anthony, annoyed at not being the victor,

amused himself by shoving his companion so as to make him fall over into the ditch. The other would dodge

backwards, and each time he did he uttered some German expression in an angry tone, which made the

peasant roar with laughter. Finally the Prussian lost his temper, and just as Anthony was rolling towards him

he responded with such a terrific blow with his fist that the Colossus staggered.

Then, excited by the brandy, the old man seized the pugilist round the waist, shook him for a few moments as

he would have done with a little child, and pitched him at random to the other side of the road. Then, satisfied

But the soldier picked himself up in a hurry, his head bare, his helmet having rolled off, and drawing his

When he saw him coming the peasant seized his whip by the top of the handle, his big holly wood whip,

The Prussian approached, his head down, making a lunge with his sword, sure of killing his adversary. But

the old fellow, squarely hitting the blade, the point of which would have pierced his stomach, turned it aside,

and with the butt end of the whip struck the soldier a sharp blow on the temple and he fell to the ground.

Then he, gazed aghast, stupefied with amazement, at the body, twitching convulsively at first and then lying

prone and motionless. He bent over it, turned it on its back, and gazed at it for some time. The man's eyes

were closed, and blood trickled from a wound at the side of his forehead. Although it was dark, Father

He remained there, at his wit's end, while his cart continued slowly on its way.

What was he to do? He would be shot! They would burn his farm, ruin his district! What should he do? What

should he do? How could he hide the body, conceal the fact of his death, deceive the Prussians? He heard

voices in the distance, amid the utter stillness of the snow. All at once he roused himself, and picking up the

helmet he placed it on his victim's head. Then, seizing him round the body, he lifted him up in his arms, and

thus running with him, he overtook his team, and threw the body on top of the manure. Once in his own

He walked slowly, racking his brain, but without result. He saw, he felt, that he was lost. He entered his

courtyard. A light was shining in one of the attic windows; his maid was not asleep. He hastily backed his

wagon to the edge of the manure hollow. He thought that by overturning the manure the body lying on top of

As he had foreseen, the man was buried beneath the manure. Anthony evened it down with his fork, which he

stuck in the ground beside it. He called his stableman, told him to put up the horses, and went to his room.

He went to bed, still thinking of what he had best do, but no ideas came to him. His apprehension increased in

the quiet of his room. They would shoot him! He was bathed in perspiration from fear, his teeth chattered, he

He went downstairs to the kitchen, took the bottle of brandy from the sideboard and carried it upstairs. He

drank two large glasses, one after another, adding a fresh intoxication to the late one, without quieting his

He paced up and down, trying to think of some stratagem, some explanations, some cunning trick, and from

time to time he rinsed his mouth with a swallow of "fil en dix" to give him courage.

Towards midnight his watch dog, a kind of cross wolf called "Devorant," began to howl frantically. Father

Anthony shuddered to the marrow of his bones, and each time the beast began his long and lugubrious wail

He had sunk into a chair, his legs weak, stupefied, done up, waiting anxiously for "Devorant" to set up

The clock downstairs struck five. The dog was still howling. The peasant was almost insane. He rose to go

and let the dog loose, so that he should not hear him. He went downstairs, opened the hall door, and stepped

out into the darkness. The snow was still falling. The earth was all white, the farm buildings standing out like

black patches. He approached the kennel. The dog was dragging at his chain. He unfastened it. "Devorant"

gave a bound, then stopped short, his hair bristling, his legs rigid, his muzzle in the air, his nose pointed

"What's the matter with you, you dirty hound?" and he walked a few steps forward, gazing at the indistinct

He gazed at it, paralyzed by fear, and breathing hard. But all at once he saw, close by, the handle of the

manure fork which was sticking in the ground. He snatched it up and in one of those transports of fear that

It was he, his Prussian, come to life, covered with filth from his bed of manure which had kept him warm. He

had sat down mechanically, and remained there in the snow which sprinkled down, all covered with dirt and

blood as he was, and still stupid from drinking, dazed by the blow and exhausted from his wound.

He perceived Anthony, and too sodden to understand anything, he made an attempt to rise. But the moment

"Ah, pig! pig!" he sputtered. "You are not dead! You are going to denounce me nowwaitwait!"

And rushing on the German with all the strength of leis arms he flung the raised fork like a lance and buried

The soldier fell over on his back, uttering a long death moan, while the old peasant, drawing the fork out of

his breast, plunged it over and over again into his abdomen, his stomach, his throat, like a madman, piercing

the body from head to foot, as it still quivered, and the blood gushed out in streams.

Finally he stopped, exhausted by his arduous work, swallowing great mouthfuls of air, calmed down at the

As the cocks were beginning to crow in the poultry yard and it was near daybreak, he set to work to bury the

He dug a hole in the manure till he reached the earth, dug down further, working wildly, in a frenzy of

When the pit was deep enough he rolled the corpse into it with the fork, covered it with earth, which he

stamped down for some time, and then put back the manure, and he smiled as he saw the thick snow finishing

He then stuck the fork in the manure and went into the house. His bottle, still half full of brandy stood on the

At the end of an hour he was going about the country making inquiries everywhere for his soldier. He went to

As everyone knew what good friends they were, no one suspected him. He even directed the research,

An old retired gendarme who had an inn in the next village, and a pretty daughter, was arrested and shot.

It was the end of the dinner that opened the shooting season. The Marquis de Bertrans with his guests sat

around a brightly lighted table, covered with fruit and flowers. The conversation drifted to love. Immediately

there arose an animated discussion, the same eternal discussion as to whether it were possible to love more

than once. Examples were given of persons who had loved once; these were offset by those who had loved

violently many times. The men agreed that passion, like sickness, may attack the same person several times,

unless it strikes to kill. This conclusion seemed quite incontestable. The women, however, who based their

opinion on poetry rather than on practical observation, maintained that love, the great passion, may come

only once to mortals. It resembles lightning, they said, this love. A heart once touched by it becomes forever

such a waste, so ruined, so consumed, that no other strong sentiment can take root there, not even a dream.

"I tell you it is possible to love several times with all one's heart and soul. You quote examples of persons

who have killed themselves for love, to prove the impossibility of a second passion. I wager that if they had

not foolishly committed suicide, and so destroyed the possibility of a second experience, they would have

found a new love, and still another, and so on till death. It is with love as with drink. He who has once

They chose the old doctor as umpire. He thought it was as the marquis had said, a thing of temperament.

"As for me," he said, "I once knew of a love which lasted fiftyfive years without one day's respite, and

"That is beautiful! Ah, what a dream to be loved in such a way! What bliss to live for fiftyfive years

enveloped in an intense, unwavering affection! How this happy being must have blessed his life to be so

"You are not mistaken, madame, on this point the loved one was a man. You even know him; it is Monsieur

Chouquet, the chemist. As to the woman, you also know her, the old chairmender, who came every year to

the chateau." The enthusiasm of the women fell. Some expressed their contempt with "Pouah!" for the loves

of common people did not interest them. The doctor continued: "Three months ago I was called to the

deathbed of the old chairmender. The priest had preceded me. She wished to make us the executors of her

will. In order that we might understand her conduct, she told us the story of her life. It is most singular and

touching: Her father and mother were both chairmenders. She had never lived in a house. As a little child

she wandered about with them, dirty, unkempt, hungry. They visited many towns, leaving their horse, wagon

and dog just outside the limits, where the child played in the grass alone until her parents had repaired all the

broken chairs in the place. They seldom spoke, except to cry, 'Chairs! Chairs! Chairmender!'

"When the little one strayed too far away, she would be called back by the harsh, angry voice of her father.

She never heard a word of affection. When she grew older, she fetched and carried the broken chairs. Then it

was she made friends with the children in the street, but their parents always called them away and scolded

them for speaking to the barefooted child. Often the boys threw stones at her. Once a kind woman gave her a

few pennies. She saved them most carefully. "One dayshe was then eleven years oldas she was walking

through a country town she met, behind the cemetery, little Chouquet, weeping bitterly, because one of his

playmates had stolen two precious liards (mills). The tears of the small bourgeois, one of those muchenvied

mortals, who, she imagined, never knew trouble, completely upset her. She approached him and, as soon as

she learned the cause of his grief, she put into his hands all her savings. He took them without hesitation and

dried his eyes. Wild with joy, she kissed him. He was busy counting his money, and did not object. Seeing

that she was not repulsed, she threw her arms round him and gave him a hugthen she ran away.

"What was going on in her poor little head? Was it because she had sacrificed all her fortune that she became

madly fond of this youngster, or was it because she had given him the first tender kiss? The mystery is alike

for children and for those of riper years. For months she dreamed of that corner near the cemetery and of the

little chap. She stole a sou here and, there from her parents on the chair money or groceries she was sent to

buy. When she returned to the spot near the cemetery she had two francs in her pocket, but he was not there.

Passing his father's drug store, she caught sight of him behind the counter. He was sitting between a large red

globe and a blue one. She only loved him the more, quite carried away at the sight of the brilliantcolored

globes. She cherished the recollection of it forever in her heart. The following year she met him near the

school. playing marbles. She rushed up to him, threw her arms round him, and kissed him so passionately that

he screamed, in fear. To quiet him, she gave him all her money. Three francs and twenty centimes! A real

"After this he allowed her to kiss him as much as she wished. During the next four years she put into his

hands all her savings, which he pocketed conscientiously in exchange for kisses. At one time it was thirty

sons, at another two francs. Again, she only had twelve sous. She wept with grief and shame, explaining

brokenly that it had been a poor year. The next time she brought five francs, in one whole piece, which made

her laugh with joy. She no longer thought of any one but the boy, and he watched for her with impatience;

sometimes he would run to meet her. This made her heart thump with joy. Suddenly he disappeared. He had

gone to boarding school. She found this out by careful investigation. Then she used great diplomacy to

persuade her parents to change their route and pass by this way again during vacation. After a year of

scheming she succeeded. She had not seen him for two years, and scarcely recognized him, he was so

changed, had grown taller, better looking and was imposing in his uniform, with its brass buttons. He

pretended not to see her, and passed by without a glance. She wept for two days and from that time loved and

"Every year he came home and she passed him, not daring to lift her eyes. He never condescended to turn his

"'He is the only man whom I have ever seen. I don't even know if another exists.' Her parents died. She

"One day, on entering the village, where her heart always remained, she saw Chouquet coming out of his

pharmacy with a young lady leaning on his arm. She was his wife. That night the chairmender threw herself

into the river. A drunkard passing the spot pulled her out and took her to the drug store. Young Chouquet

came down in his dressing gown to revive her. Without seeming to know who she was he undressed her and

"'You are mad! People must not do stupid things like that.' His voice brought her to life again. He had spoken

to her! She was happy for a long time. He refused remuneration for his trouble, although she insisted.

"All her life passed in this way. She worked, thinking always of him. She began to buy medicines at his

pharmacy; this gave her a chance to talk to him and to see him closely. In this way, she was still able to give

"As I said before, she died this spring. When she had closed her pathetic story she entreated me to take her

earnings to the man she loved. She had worked only that she might leave him something to remind him of her

after her death. I gave the priest fifty francs for her funeral expenses. The next morning I went to see the

Chouquets. They were finishing breakfast, sitting opposite each other, fat and red, important and

selfsatisfied. They welcomed me and offered me some coffee, which I accepted. Then I began my story in a

trembling voice, sure that they would be softened, even to tears. As soon as Chouquet understood that he had

been loved by 'that vagabond! that chairmender! that wanderer!' he swore with indignation as though his

reputation had been sullied, the respect of decent people lost, his personal honor, something precious and

dearer to him than life, gone. His exasperated wife kept repeating: 'That beggar! That beggar!'

"Seeming unable to find words suitable to the enormity, he stood up and began striding about. He muttered :

'Can you understand anything so horrible, doctor? Oh, if I had only known it while she was alive, I should

"I was dumfounded; I hardly knew what to think or say, but I had to finish my mission. 'She commissioned

me,' I said, 'to give you her savings, which amount to three thousand five hundred francs. As what I have just

told you seems to be very disagreeable, perhaps you would prefer to give this money to the poor.'

"They looked at me, that man and woman,' speechless with amazement. I took the few thousand francs from

out of my pocket. Wretchedlooking money from every country. Pennies and gold pieces all mixed together.

"Madame Chouquet spoke first. 'Well, since it is the dying woman's wish, it seems to me impossible to refuse

"Her husband said, in a shamefaced manner: 'We could buy something for our children with it.'

"He replied: 'Well, give it to us anyhow, since she commissioned you to do so; we will find a way to put it to

"'It's just what I wanted,' he added, and walked off. I called him back and said:

"He laughed and held out his hand to me. I shook it. What could I do? The doctor and the druggist in a

country village must not be at enmity. I have kept the dogs. The priest took the old horse. The wagon is

useful to Chouquet, and with the money he has bought railroad stock. That is the only deep, sincere love that

The doctor looked up. The marquise, whose eyes were full of tears, sighed and said:

Mme. Lefevre was a country dame, a widow, one of these half peasants, with ribbons and bonnets with

trimming on them, one of those persons who clipped her words and put on great airs in public, concealing the

soul of a pretentious animal beneath a comical and bedizened exterior, just as the countryfolks hide their

The two women lived in a little house with green shutters by the side of the high road in Normandy, in the

centre of the country of Caux. As they had a narrow strip of garden in front of the house, they grew some

One night someone stole twelve onions. As soon as Rose became aware of the theft, she ran to tell madame,

who came downstairs in her woolen petticoat. It was a shame and a disgrace! They had robbed her, Mme.

And the two frightened women examined the foot tracks, talking, and supposing all sorts of things.

"See, they went that way! They stepped on the wall, they jumped into the garden!"

The news of the theft spread. The neighbor came, making examinations and discussing the matter in their

turn, while the two women explained to each newcomer what they had observed and their opinion.

That is true, they ought to have a dog, if it were only to give the alarm. Not a big dog. Heavens! what would

they do with a big dog? He would eat their heads off. But a little dog (in Normandy they say "quin"), a little

As soon as everyone had left, Mme. Lefevre discussed this idea of a dog for some time. On reflection she

made a thousand objections, terrified at the idea of a bowl full of soup, for she belonged to that race of

parsimonious country women who always carry centimes in their pocket to give alms in public to beggars on

Rose, who loved animals, gave her opinion and defended it shrewdly. So it was decided that they should have

They began to look for one, but could find nothing but big dogs, who would devour enough soup to make one

shudder. The grocer of Rolleville had one, a tiny one, but he demanded two francs to cover the cost of

sending it. Mme. Lefevre declared that she would feed a "quin," but would not buy one.

The baker, who knew all that occurred, brought in his wagon one morning a strange little yellow animal,

almost without paws, with the body of a crocodile, the head of a fox, and a curly taila true cockade, as big

as all the rest of him. Mme. Lefevre thought this common cur that cost nothing was very handsome. Rose

The dog was installed in an old soap box and they gave it some water which it drank. They then offered it a

"When he is thoroughly accustomed to the house we can let him run. He can find something to eat, roaming

They let him run, in fact, which did not prevent him from being famished. Also he never barked except to beg

Anyone might come into the garden, and Pierrot would run up and fawn on each one in turn and not utter a

Mme. Lefevre, however, had become accustomed to the animal. She even went so far as to like it and to give

But she had not once thought of the dog tax, and when they came to collect eight francseight francs,

It was immediately decided that they must get rid of Pierrot. No one wanted him. Every one declined to take

him for ten leagues around. Then they resolved, not knowing what else to do, to make him "piquer du mas."

"Piquer du mas" means to eat chalk. When one wants to get rid of a dog they make him "Piquer du mas."

In the midst of an immense plain one sees a kind of hut, or rather a very small roof standing above the

ground. This is the entrance to the clay pit. A big perpendicular hole is sunk for twenty metres underground

Once a year they go down into the quarry at the time they fertilize the ground. The rest of the year it serves as

a cemetery for condemned dogs, and as one passed by this hole plaintive howls, furious or despairing barks

Sportsmen's dogs and sheep dogs flee in terror from this mournful place, and when one leans over it one

When an animal has suffered down there for ten or twelve days, nourished on the foul remains of his

predecessors, another animal, larger and more vigorous, is thrown into the hole. There they are, alone,

starving, with glittering eyes. They watch each other, follow each other, hesitate in doubt. But hunger impels

them; they attack each other, fight desperately for some time, and the stronger eats the weaker, devours him

When it was decided to make Pierrot "piquer du mas" they looked round for an executioner. The laborer who

mended the road demanded six sous to take the dog there. That seemed wildly exorbitant to Mme. Lefevre.

The neighbor's hired boy wanted five sous; that was still too much. So Rose having observed that they had

better carry it there themselves, as in that way it would not be brutally treated on the way and made to suspect

They offered the dog that evening a good dish of soup with a piece of butter in it. He swallowed every morsel

They walked quickly, like thieves, across the plain. They soon perceived the chalk pit and walked up to it.

Mme. Lefevre leaned over to hear if any animal was moaning. No, there were none there; Pierrot would be

alone. Then Rose, who was crying, kissed the dog and threw him into the chalk pit, and they both leaned

First they heard a dull sound, then the sharp, bitter, distracting cry of an animal in pain, then a succession of

little mournful cries, then despairing appeals, the cries of a dog who is entreating, his head raised toward the

They were filled with remorse, with terror, with a wild inexplicable fear, and ran away from the spot. As

Mme. Lefevre dreamed she was sitting down at table to eat her soup, but when she uncovered the tureen

She awoke and thought she heard him yelping still. She listened, but she was mistaken.

She fell asleep again and found herself on a high road, an endless road, which she followed. Suddenly in the

middle of the road she perceived a basket, a large farmer's basket, lying there, and this basket frightened her.

She ended by opening it, and Pierrot, concealed in it, seized her hand and would not let go. She ran away in

terror with the dog hanging to the end of her arm, which he held between his teeth.

He was yelping, yelping still; he had yelped all night. She began to sob and called him by all sorts of

endearing names. He answered her with all the tender inflections of his dog's voice.

Then she wanted to see him again, promising herself that she would give him a good home till he died.

She ran to the chalk digger, whose business it was to excavate for chalk, and told him the situation. The man

"You want your dog? That will cost four francs." She gave a jump. All her grief was at an end at once.

"Do you suppose I am going to bring my ropes, my windlass, and set it up, and go down there with my boy

and let myself be bitten, perhaps, by your cursed dog for the pleasure of giving it back to you? You should

As soon as she entered the house she called Rose and told her of the quarryman's charges. Rose, always

"Four francs! That is a good deal of money, madame." Then she added: "If we could throw him something to

Mme. Lefevre approved of this and was quite delighted. So they set out again with a big piece of bread and

They cut it in mouthfuls, which they threw down one after the other, speaking by turns to Pierrot. As soon as

They returned that evening and the next day and every day. But they made only one trip.

One morning as they were just letting fall the first mouthful they suddenly heard a tremendous barking in the

"Pierrot!" cried Rose. And Pierrot yelped and yelped. Then they began to throw down some food. But each

time they noticed distinctly a terrible struggle going on, then plaintive cries from Pierrot, who had been bitten

The two women, dumfounded, looked at each other and Mme. Lefevre said in a sour tone:

And, suffocating at the thought of all the dogs living at her expense, she went away, even carrying back what

It was a wedding procession that was coming along the road between the tall trees that bounded the farms and

cast their shadow on the road. At the head were the bride and groom, then the family, then the invited guests,

and last of all the poor of the neighborhood. The village urchins who hovered about the narrow road like flies

The bridegroom was a goodlooking young fellow, Jean Patu, the richest farmer in the neighborhood, but he

was above all things, an ardent sportsman who seemed to take leave of his senses in order to satisfy that

passion, and who spent large sums on his dogs, his keepers, his ferrets and his guns. The bride, Rosalie

Roussel, had been courted by all the likely young fellows in the district, for they all thought her handsome

and they knew that she would have a good dowry. But she had chosen Patu; partly, perhaps, because she

liked him better than she did the others, but still more, like a careful Normandy girl, because he had more

As they entered the white gateway of the husband's farm, forty shots resounded without their seeing those

who fired, as they were hidden in the ditches. The noise seemed to please the men, who were slouching along

heavily in their best clothes, and Patu left his wife, and running up to a farm servant whom he perceived

behind a tree, took his gun and fired a shot himself, as frisky as a young colt. Then they went on, beneath the

apple trees which were heavy with fruit, through the high grass and through the midst of the calves, who

looked at them with their great eyes, got up slowly and remained standing, with their muzzles turned toward

The men became serious when they came within measurable distance of the wedding dinner. Some of them,

the rich ones, had on tall, shining silk hats, which seemed altogether out of place there; others had old head

coverings with a long nap, which might have been taken for moleskin, while the humblest among them wore

caps. All the women had on shawls, which they wore loosely on their back, holding the tips ceremoniously

under their arms. They were red, particolored, flaming shawls, and their brightness seemed to astonish the

black fowls on the dungheap, the ducks on the side of the pond and the pigeons on the thatched roofs.

The extensive farm buildings seemed to be waiting there at the end of that archway of apple trees, and a sort

of vapor came out of open door and windows and an almost overpowering odor of eatables was exhaled from

the vast building, from all its openings and from its very walls. The string of guests extended through the

yard; but when the foremost of them reached the house, they broke the chain and dispersed, while those

behind were still coming in at the open gate. The ditches were now lined with urchins and curious poor

people, and the firing did not cease, but came from every side at once, and a cloud of smoke, and that odor

which has the same intoxicating effect as absinthe, blended with the atmosphere. The women were shaking

their dresses outside the door, to get rid of the dust, were undoing their capstrings and pulling their shawls

over their arms, and then they went into the house to lay them aside altogether for the time. The table was laid

in the great kitchen that would hold a hundred persons; they sat down to dinner at two o'clock; and at eight

o'clock they were still eating, and the men, in their shirtsleeves, with their waistcoats unbuttoned and with

red faces, were swallowing down the food and drink as if they had been whirlpools. The cider sparkled

merrily, clear and golden in the large glasses, by the side of the dark, bloodcolored wine, and between every

dish they made a "hole," the Normandy hole, with a glass of brandy which inflamed the body and put foolish

notions into the head. Low jokes were exchanged across the table until the whole arsenal of peasant wit was

exhausted. For the last hundred years the same broad stories had served for similar occasions, and, although

every one knew them, they still hit the mark and made both rows of guests roar with laughter.

At one end of the table four young fellows, who were neighbors, were preparing some practical jokes for the

newly married couple, and they seemed to have got hold of a good one by the way they whispered and

laughed, and suddenly one of them, profiting by a moment of silence, exclaimed: "The poachers will have a

good time tonight, with this moon! I say, Jean, you will not be looking at the moon, will you?" The

bridegroom turned to him quickly and replied: "Only let them come, that's all!" But the other young fellow

The whole table was convulsed with laughter, so that the glasses shook, but the bridegroom became furious at

the thought that anybody would profit by his wedding to come and poach on his land, and repeated: "I only

Then there was a flood of talk with a double meaning which made the bride blush somewhat, although she

was trembling with expectation; and when they had emptied the kegs of brandy they all went to bed. The

young couple went into their own room, which was on the ground floor, as most rooms in farmhouses are. As

it was very warm, they opened the window and closed the shutters. A small lamp in bad taste, a present from

the bride's father, was burning on the chest of drawers, and the bed stood ready to receive the young people.

The young woman had already taken off her wreath and her dress, and she was in her petticoat, unlacing her

boots, while Jean was finishing his cigar and looking at her out of the corners of his eyes. Suddenly, with a

brusque movement, like a man who is about to set to work, he took off his coat. She had already taken off her

boots, and was now pulling off her stockings, and then she said to him: "Go and hide yourself behind the

He seemed as if he were about to refuse; but at last he did as she asked him, and in a moment she unfastened

her petticoat, which slipped down, fell at her feet and lay on the ground. She left it there, stepped over it in

her loose chemise and slipped into the bed, whose springs creaked beneath her weight. He immediately went

up to the bed, and, stooping over his wife, he sought her lips, which she hid beneath the pillow, when a shot

was heard in the distance, in the direction of the forest of Rapees, as he thought.

He raised himself anxiously, with his heart beating, and running to the window, he opened the shutters. The

full moon flooded the yard with yellow light, and the reflection of the apple trees made black shadows at their

feet, while in the distance the fields gleamed, covered with the ripe corn. But as he was leaning out, listening

to every sound in the still night, two bare arms were put round his neck, and his wife whispered, trying to pull

He turned round, put his arms round her, and drew her toward him, but just as he was laying her on the 'bed,

which yielded beneath her weight, they heard another report, considerably nearer this time, and Jean, giving

way to his tumultuous rage, swore aloud: "Damn it! They will think I do not go out and see what it is because

of you! Wait, wait a few minutes!" He put on his shoes again, took down his gun, which was always hanging

within reach against the wall, and, as his wife threw herself on her knees in her terror, imploring him not to

She waited one hour, two hours, until daybreak, but her husband did not return. Then she lost her head,

aroused the house, related how angry Jean was, and said that he had gone after the poachers, and immediately

all the male farmservants, even the boys, went in search of their master. They found him two leagues from

the farm, tied hand and foot, half dead with rage, his gun broken, his trousers turned inside out, and with three

dead hares hanging round his neck, and a placard on his chest with these words: "Who goes on the chase

In later years, when he used to tell this story of his wedding night, he usually added: "Ah! as far as a joke

went it was a good joke. They caught me in a snare, as if I had been a rabbit, the dirty brutes, and they shoved

my head into a bag. But if I can only catch them some day they had better look out for themselves!"

We had just left Rouen and were galloping along the road to Jumieges. The light carriage flew along across

the level country. Presently the horse slackened his pace to walk up the hill of Cantelen.

One sees there one of the most magnificent views in the world. Behind us lay Rouen, the city of churches,

with its Gothic belfries, sculptured like ivory trinkets; before us Saint Sever, the manufacturing suburb,

whose thousands of smoking chimneys rise amid the expanse of sky, opposite the thousand sacred steeples of

On the one hand the spire of the cathedral, the highest of human monuments, on the other the engine of the

powerhouse, its rival, and almost as high, and a metre higher than the tallest pyramid in Egypt.

Before us wound the Seine, with its scattered islands and bordered by white banks, covered with a forest on

the right and on the left immense meadows, bounded by another forest yonder in the distance.

Here and there large ships lay at anchor along the banks of the wide river. Three enormous steam boats were

starting out, one behind the other, for Havre, and a chain of boats, a bark, two schooners and a brig, were

going upstream to Rouen, drawn by a little tug that emitted a cloud of black smoke.

My companion, a native of the country, did not glance at this wonderful landscape, but he smiled continually;

"Ah, you will soon see something comicalFather Matthew's chapel. That is a sweet morsel, my boy."

"I will give you a whiff of Normandy that will stay by you. Father Matthew is the handsomest Norman in the

province and his chapel is one of the wonders of the world, nothing more nor less. But I will first give you a

"Father Matthew, who is also called Father 'La Boisson,' is an old sergeantmajor who has come back to his

native land. He combines in admirable proportions, making a perfect whole, the humbug of the old soldier

and the sly roguery of the Norman. On his return to Normandy, thanks to influence and incredible cleverness,

he was made doorkeeper of a votive chapel, a chapel dedicated to the Virgin and frequented chiefly by young

women who have gone astray . . . . He composed and had painted a special prayer to his 'Good Virgin.' This

prayer is a masterpiece of unintentional irony, of Norman wit, in which jest is blended with fear of the saint

and with the superstitious fear of the secret influence of something. He has not much faith in his protectress,

but he believes in her a little through prudence, and he is considerate of her through policy.

"'Our good Madame Virgin Mary, natural protectress of girl mothers in this land and all over the world,

"'Do not forget me, especially when you are with your holy spouse, and intercede with God the Father that he

"This prayer, which was suppressed by the clergy of the district, is sold by him privately, and is said to be

"In fact he talks of the good Virgin as the valet de chambre of a redoubted prince might talk of his master

who confided in him all his little private secrets. He knows a number of amusing anecdotes at his expense

"As the fees coming from the Virgin did not appear sufficient to him, he added to the main figure a little

business in saints. He has them all, or nearly all. There was not room enough in the chapel, so he stored them

in the woodshed and brings them forth as soon as the faithful ask for them. He carved these little wooden

statues himselfthey are comical in the extremeand painted them all bright green one year when they

were painting his house. You know that saints cure diseases, but each saint has his specialty, and you must

not confound them or make any blunders. They are as jealous of each other as mountebanks.

"In order that they may make no mistake, the old women come and consult Matthew.

"'Why, Saint Osyme is good and Saint Pamphilius is not bad.' But that is not all.

"As Matthew has some time to spare, he drinks; but he drinks like a professional, with conviction, so much so

that he is intoxicated regularly every evening. He is drunk, but he is aware of it. He is so well aware of it that

he notices each day his exact degree of intoxication. That is his chief occupation; the chapel is a secondary

"There is no such instrument, but Matthew's observations are as precise as those of a mathematician. You

may hear him repeating incessantly: 'Since Monday I have had more than fortyfive,' or else 'I was between

fiftytwo and fiftyeight,' or else 'I had at least sixtysix to seventy,' or 'Hullo, cheat, I thought I was in the

"He declares that he never reached his limit, but as he acknowledges that his observations cease to be exact

when he has passed ninety, one cannot depend absolutely on the truth of that statement.

"When Matthew acknowledges that he has passed ninety, you may rest assured that he is blind drunk.

"On these occasions his wife, Melie, another marvel, flies into a fury. She waits for him at the door of the

"Then Matthew, who is not laughing any longer, plants himself opposite her and says in a severe tone:

"'Don't bawl any more. I have had about ninety; I am not counting any more. Look out, I am going to hit

"If, on the following day, she reverts to the subject, he laughs in her face and says:

"'Come, come! We have said enough. It is past. As long as I have not reached my limit there is no harm done.

We had reached the top of the hill. The road entered the delightful forest of Roumare.

Autumn, marvellous autumn, blended its gold and purple with the remaining traces of verdure. We passed

through Duclair. Then, instead of going on to Jumieges, my friend turned to the left and, taking a crosscut,

And presently from the top of a high hill we saw again the magnificent valley of the Seine and the winding

At our right a very small slatecovered building, with a bell tower as large as a sunshade, adjoined a pretty

"Here are some friends!" cried a big voice, and Matthew appeared on the threshold. He was a man about

My friend shook him by the hand and introduced me, and Matthew took us into a clean kitchen, which served

"I have no elegant apartment, monsieur. I do not like to get too far away from the food. The saucepans, you

"Why did you come on Thursday? You know quite well that this is the day I consult my Guardian Saint. I

And running to the door, he uttered a terrific roar: "Melie!" which must have startled the sailors in the ships

"I will tell you," said Matthew. "Last year I found only twenty rasieres (an old dry measure) of apricots.

There are no more, but those are the only things to make cider of. So I made some, and yesterday I tapped the

barrel. Talk of nectar! That was nectar. You shall tell me what you think of it. Polyte was here, and we sat

down and drank a glass and another without being satisfied (one could go on drinking it until to morrow),

and at last, with glass after glass, I felt a chill at my stomach. I said to Polyte: 'Supposing we drink a glass of

cognac to warm ourselves?' He agreed. But this cognac, it sets you on fire, so that we had to go back to the

cider. But by going from chills to heat and heat to chills, I saw that I was in the nineties. Polyte was not far

The door opened and Melie appeared. At once, before bidding us goodday, she cried:

"Don't say that, Melie; don't say that," said Matthew, getting angry. "I have never reached my limit."

They gave us a delicious luncheon outside beneath two lime trees, beside the little chapel and overlooking the

vast landscape. And Matthew told us, with a mixture of humor and unexpected credulity, incredible stories of

We had drunk a good deal of delicious cider, sparkling and sweet, fresh and intoxicating, which he preferred

to all other drinks, and were smoking our pipes astride our chairs when two women appeared.

They were old, dried up and bent. After greeting us they asked for Saint Blanc. Matthew winked at us as he

"I will get him for you." And he disappeared in his wood shed. He remained there fully five minutes. Then he

"I don't know where he is. I cannot find him. I am quite sure that I had him." Then making a speaking trumpet

"Was not that the one you took last week to stop up a hole in the rabbit hutch?"

Saint Blanc was indeed stuck into the earth like an ordinary stake, covered with mud and dirt, and forming a

As soon as they perceived him, the two women fell on their knees, crossed themselves and began to murmur

He went to fetch the straw and made them a priedieu. Then, looking at his muddy saint and doubtless afraid

He took a pail of water and a brush and began to scrub the wooden image vigorously, while the two old

As he was carrying the glass to his lips he stopped and said in a rather confused manner:

"All the same, when I put Saint Blanc out with the rabbits I thought he would not make any more money. For

two years no one had asked for him. But the saints, you see, they are never out of date."