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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Original Short Stories of Maupassant,
+Volume 11, by Guy de Maupassant
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Original Short Stories, Volume 11 (of 13)
+
+Author: Guy de Maupassant
+
+Release Date: August 16, 2006 [EBook #3087]
+Last Updated: February 23, 2018
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MAUPASSANT SHORT STORIES ***
+
+
+
+Produced by David Widger
+
+
+
+
+
+ORIGINAL SHORT STORIES, VOLUME 11 (of 13)
+
+
+By Guy De Maupassant
+
+
+Translated by:
+
+    ALBERT M. C. McMASTER, B.A.
+    A. E. HENDERSON, B.A.
+    MME. QUESADA and Others
+
+
+
+VOLUME XI.
+
+
+     THE UMBRELLA
+     BELHOMME'S BEAST
+     DISCOVERY
+     THE ACCURSED BREAD
+     THE DOWRY
+     THE DIARY OF A MAD MAN
+     THE MASK
+     THE PENGUINS ROCK
+     A FAMILY
+     SUICIDES
+     AN ARTIFICE
+     DREAMS
+     SIMON'S PAPA
+
+
+
+
+THE UMBRELLA
+
+Mme. Oreille was a very economical woman; she knew the value of a
+centime, and possessed a whole storehouse of strict principles with
+regard to the multiplication of money, so that her cook found the
+greatest difficulty in making what the servants call their market-penny,
+and her husband was hardly allowed any pocket money at all. They were,
+however, very comfortably off, and had no children; but it really
+pained Mme. Oreille to see any money spent; it was like tearing at her
+heartstrings when she had to take any of those nice crown-pieces out
+of her pocket; and whenever she had to spend anything, no matter how
+necessary it might be, she slept badly the next night.
+
+Oreille was continually saying to his wife:
+
+“You really might be more liberal, as we have no children, and never
+spend our income.”
+
+“You don't know what may happen,” she used to reply. “It is better to
+have too much than too little.”
+
+She was a little woman of about forty, very active, rather hasty,
+wrinkled, very neat and tidy, and with a very short temper.
+
+Her husband frequently complained of all the privations she made him
+endure; some of them were particularly painful to him, as they touched
+his vanity.
+
+He was one of the head clerks in the War Office, and only stayed on
+there in obedience to his wife's wish, to increase their income which
+they did not nearly spend.
+
+For two years he had always come to the office with the same old patched
+umbrella, to the great amusement of his fellow clerks. At last he got
+tired of their jokes, and insisted upon his wife buying him a new one.
+She bought one for eight francs and a half, one of those cheap articles
+which large houses sell as an advertisement. When the men in the office
+saw the article, which was being sold in Paris by the thousand, they
+began their jokes again, and Oreille had a dreadful time of it. They
+even made a song about it, which he heard from morning till night all
+over the immense building.
+
+Oreille was very angry, and peremptorily told his wife to get him a new
+one, a good silk one, for twenty francs, and to bring him the bill, so
+that he might see that it was all right.
+
+She bought him one for eighteen francs, and said, getting red with anger
+as she gave it to her husband:
+
+“This will last you for five years at least.”
+
+Oreille felt quite triumphant, and received a small ovation at the
+office with his new acquisition.
+
+When he went home in the evening his wife said to him, looking at the
+umbrella uneasily:
+
+“You should not leave it fastened up with the elastic; it will very
+likely cut the silk. You must take care of it, for I shall not buy you a
+new one in a hurry.”
+
+She took it, unfastened it, and remained dumfounded with astonishment
+and rage; in the middle of the silk there was a hole as big as a
+six-penny-piece; it had been made with the end of a cigar.
+
+“What is that?” she screamed.
+
+Her husband replied quietly, without looking at it:
+
+“What is it? What do you mean?”
+
+She was choking with rage, and could hardly get out a word.
+
+“You--you--have--burned--your umbrella! Why--you must be--mad! Do you
+wish to ruin us outright?”
+
+He turned round, and felt that he was growing pale.
+
+“What are you talking about?”
+
+“I say that you have burned your umbrella. Just look here.”
+
+And rushing at him, as if she were going to beat him, she violently
+thrust the little circular burned hole under his nose.
+
+He was so utterly struck dumb at the sight of it that he could only
+stammer out:
+
+“What-what is it? How should I know? I have done nothing, I will swear.
+I don't know what is the matter with the umbrella.”
+
+“You have been playing tricks with it at the office; you have been
+playing the fool and opening it, to show it off!” she screamed.
+
+“I only opened it once, to let them see what a nice one it was, that is
+all, I swear.”
+
+But she shook with rage, and got up one of those conjugal scenes which
+make a peaceable man dread the domestic hearth more than a battlefield
+where bullets are raining.
+
+She mended it with a piece of silk cut out of the old umbrella, which
+was of a different color, and the next day Oreille went off very humbly
+with the mended article in his hand. He put it into a cupboard, and
+thought no more of it than of some unpleasant recollection.
+
+But he had scarcely got home that evening when his wife took the
+umbrella from him, opened it, and nearly had a fit when she saw what had
+befallen it, for the disaster was irreparable. It was covered with small
+holes, which evidently proceeded from burns, just as if some one had
+emptied the ashes from a lighted pipe on to it. It was done for utterly,
+irreparably.
+
+She looked at it without a word, in too great a passion to be able
+to say anything. He, also, when he saw the damage, remained almost
+dumfounded, in a state of frightened consternation.
+
+They looked at each other, then he looked at the floor; and the next
+moment she threw the useless article at his head, screaming out in a
+transport of the most violent rage, for she had recovered her voice by
+that time:
+
+“Oh! you brute! you brute! You did it on purpose, but I will pay you out
+for it. You shall not have another.”
+
+And then the scene began again, and after the storm had raged for an
+hour, he at last was able to explain himself. He declared that he could
+not understand it at all, and that it could only proceed from malice or
+from vengeance.
+
+A ring at the bell saved him; it was a friend whom they were expecting
+to dinner.
+
+Mme. Oreille submitted the case to him. As for buying a new umbrella,
+that was out of the question; her husband should not have another.
+The friend very sensibly said that in that case his clothes would be
+spoiled, and they were certainly worth more than the umbrella. But the
+little woman, who was still in a rage, replied:
+
+“Very well, then, when it rains he may have the kitchen umbrella, for I
+will not give him a new silk one.”
+
+Oreille utterly rebelled at such an idea.
+
+“All right,” he said; “then I shall resign my post. I am not going to
+the office with the kitchen umbrella.”
+
+The friend interposed.
+
+“Have this one re-covered; it will not cost much.”
+
+But Mme. Oreille, being in the temper that she was, said:
+
+“It will cost at least eight francs to re-cover it. Eight and eighteen
+are twenty-six. Just fancy, twenty-six francs for an umbrella! It is
+utter madness!”
+
+The friend, who was only a poor man of the middle classes, had an
+inspiration:
+
+“Make your fire assurance pay for it. The companies pay for all articles
+that are burned, as long as the damage has been done in your own house.”
+
+On hearing this advice the little woman calmed down immediately, and
+then, after a moment's reflection, she said to her husband:
+
+“To-morrow, before going to your office, you will go to the Maternelle
+Assurance Company, show them the state your umbrella is in, and make
+them pay for the damage.”
+
+M. Oreille fairly jumped, he was so startled at the proposal.
+
+“I would not do it for my life! It is eighteen francs lost, that is all.
+It will not ruin us.”
+
+The next morning he took a walking-stick when he went out, and, luckily,
+it was a fine day.
+
+Left at home alone, Mme. Oreille could not get over the loss of
+her eighteen francs by any means. She had put the umbrella on the
+dining-room table, and she looked at it without being able to come to
+any determination.
+
+Every moment she thought of the assurance company, but she did not dare
+to encounter the quizzical looks of the gentlemen who might receive her,
+for she was very timid before people, and blushed at a mere nothing, and
+was embarrassed when she had to speak to strangers.
+
+But the regret at the loss of the eighteen francs pained her as if she
+had been wounded. She tried not to think of it any more, and yet every
+moment the recollection of the loss struck her painfully. What was she
+to do, however? Time went on, and she could not decide; but suddenly,
+like all cowards, on making a resolve, she became determined.
+
+“I will go, and we will see what will happen.”
+
+But first of all she was obliged to prepare the umbrella so that the
+disaster might be complete, and the reason of it quite evident. She took
+a match from the mantelpiece, and between the ribs she burned a hole as
+big as the palm of her hand; then she delicately rolled it up, fastened
+it with the elastic band, put on her bonnet and shawl, and went quickly
+toward the Rue de Rivoli, where the assurance office was.
+
+But the nearer she got, the slower she walked. What was she going to
+say, and what reply would she get?
+
+She looked at the numbers of the houses; there were still twenty-eight.
+That was all right, so she had time to consider, and she walked slower
+and slower. Suddenly she saw a door on which was a large brass plate
+with “La Maternelle Fire Assurance Office” engraved on it. Already!
+She waited a moment, for she felt nervous and almost ashamed; then she
+walked past, came back, walked past again, and came back again.
+
+At last she said to herself:
+
+“I must go in, however, so I may as well do it sooner as later.”
+
+She could not help noticing, however, how her heart beat as she entered.
+She went into an enormous room with grated doors all round it, and above
+them little openings at which a man's head appeared, and as a gentleman
+carrying a number of papers passed her, she stopped him and said
+timidly: “I beg your pardon, monsieur, but can you tell me where I must
+apply for payment for anything that has been accidentally burned?”
+
+He replied in a sonorous voice:
+
+“The first door on the left; that is the department you want.”
+
+This frightened her still more, and she felt inclined to run away, to
+put in no claim, to sacrifice her eighteen francs. But the idea of that
+sum revived her courage, and she went upstairs, out of breath, stopping
+at almost every other step.
+
+She knocked at a door which she saw on the first landing, and a clear
+voice said, in answer:
+
+“Come in!”
+
+She obeyed mechanically, and found herself in a large room where three
+solemn gentlemen, all with a decoration in their buttonholes, were
+standing talking.
+
+One of them asked her: “What do you want, madame?”
+
+She could hardly get out her words, but stammered: “I have come--I have
+come on account of an accident, something--“.
+
+He very politely pointed out a seat to her,
+
+“If you will kindly sit down I will attend to you in a moment.”
+
+And, returning to the other two, he went on with the conversation.
+
+“The company, gentlemen, does not consider that it is under any
+obligation to you for more than four hundred thousand francs, and we can
+pay no attention to your claim to the further sum of a hundred thousand,
+which you wish to make us pay. Besides that, the surveyor's valuation--”
+
+One of the others interrupted him:
+
+“That is quite enough, monsieur; the law courts will decide between us,
+and we have nothing further to do than to take our leave.” And they went
+out after mutual ceremonious bows.
+
+Oh! if she could only have gone away with them, how gladly she would
+have done it; she would have run away and given up everything. But it
+was too late, for the gentleman came back, and said, bowing:
+
+“What can I do for you, madame?”
+
+She could scarcely speak, but at last she managed to say:
+
+“I have come-for this.”
+
+The manager looked at the object which she held out to him in mute
+astonishment.
+
+With trembling fingers she tried to undo the elastic, and succeeding,
+after several attempts, she hastily opened the damaged remains of the
+umbrella.
+
+“It looks to me to be in a very bad state of health,” he said
+compassionately.
+
+“It cost me twenty francs,” she said, with some hesitation.
+
+He seemed astonished. “Really! As much as that?”
+
+“Yes, it was a capital article, and I wanted you to see the condition it
+is in.”
+
+“Yes, yes, I see; very well. But I really do not understand what it can
+have to do with me.”
+
+She began to feel uncomfortable; perhaps this company did not pay for
+such small articles, and she said:
+
+“But--it is burned.”
+
+He could not deny it.
+
+“I see that very well,” he replied.
+
+She remained open-mouthed, not knowing what to say next; then, suddenly
+recollecting that she had left out the main thing, she said hastily:
+
+“I am Mme. Oreille; we are assured in La Maternelle, and I have come to
+claim the value of this damage.”
+
+“I only want you to have it re-covered,” she added quickly, fearing a
+positive refusal.
+
+The manager was rather embarrassed, and said: “But, really, madame, we
+do not sell umbrellas; we cannot undertake such kinds of repairs.”
+
+The little woman felt her courage reviving; she was not going to give up
+without a struggle; she was not even afraid any more, and said:
+
+“I only want you to pay me the cost of repairing it; I can quite well
+get it done myself.”
+
+The gentleman seemed rather confused.
+
+“Really, madame, it is such a very small matter! We are never asked to
+give compensation for such trivial losses. You must allow that we cannot
+make good pocket-handkerchiefs, gloves, brooms, slippers, all the small
+articles which are every day exposed to the chances of being burned.”
+
+She got red in the face, and felt inclined to fly into a rage.
+
+“But, monsieur, last December one of our chimneys caught fire, and
+caused at least five hundred francs' damage; M. Oreille made no claim on
+the company, and so it is only just that it should pay for my umbrella
+now.”
+
+The manager, guessing that she was telling a lie, said, with a smile:
+
+“You must acknowledge, madame, that it is very surprising that M.
+Oreille should have asked no compensation for damages amounting to five
+hundred francs, and should now claim five or six francs for mending an
+umbrella.”
+
+She was not the least put out, and replied:
+
+“I beg your pardon, monsieur, the five hundred francs affected M.
+Oreille's pocket, whereas this damage, amounting to eighteen francs,
+concerns Mme. Oreille's pocket only, which is a totally different
+matter.”
+
+As he saw that he had no chance of getting rid of her, and that he would
+only be wasting his time, he said resignedly:
+
+“Will you kindly tell me how the damage was done?”
+
+She felt that she had won the victory, and said:
+
+“This is how it happened, monsieur: In our hall there is a bronze stick
+and umbrella stand, and the other day, when I came in, I put my umbrella
+into it. I must tell you that just above there is a shelf for the
+candlesticks and matches. I put out my hand, took three or four matches,
+and struck one, but it missed fire, so I struck another, which ignited,
+but went out immediately, and a third did the same.”
+
+The manager interrupted her to make a joke.
+
+“I suppose they were government matches, then?”
+
+She did not understand him, and went on:
+
+“Very likely. At any rate, the fourth caught fire, and I lit my candle,
+and went into my room to go to bed; but in a quarter of an hour I
+fancied that I smelt something burning, and I have always been terribly
+afraid of fire. If ever we have an accident it will not be my fault, I
+assure you. I am terribly nervous since our chimney was on fire, as I
+told you; so I got up, and hunted about everywhere, sniffing like a dog
+after game, and at last I noticed that my umbrella was burning. Most
+likely a match had fallen between the folds and burned it. You can see
+how it has damaged it.”
+
+The manager had taken his cue, and asked her: “What do you estimate the
+damage at?”
+
+She did not know what to say, as she was not certain what value to put
+on it, but at last she replied:
+
+“Perhaps you had better get it done yourself. I will leave it to you.”
+
+He, however, naturally refused.
+
+“No, madame, I cannot do that. Tell me the amount of your claim, that is
+all I want to know.”
+
+“Well, I think that--Look here, monsieur, I do not want to make any
+money out of you, so I will tell you what we will do. I will take my
+umbrella to the maker, who will re-cover it in good, durable silk, and I
+will bring the bill to you. Will that suit you, monsieur?”
+
+“Perfectly, madame; we will settle it so. Here is a note for the
+cashier, who will repay you whatever it costs you.”
+
+He gave Mme. Oreille a slip of paper, who took it, got up and went out,
+thanking him, for she was in a hurry to escape lest he should change his
+mind.
+
+She went briskly through the streets, looking out for a really good
+umbrella maker, and when she found a shop which appeared to be a
+first-class one, she went in, and said, confidently:
+
+“I want this umbrella re-covered in silk, good silk. Use the very best
+and strongest you have; I don't mind what it costs.”
+
+
+
+
+BELHOMME'S BEAST
+
+The coach for Havre was ready to leave Criquetot, and all the passengers
+were waiting for their names to be called out, in the courtyard of the
+Commercial Hotel kept by Monsieur Malandain, Jr.
+
+It was a yellow wagon, mounted on wheels which had once been yellow, but
+were now almost gray through the accumulation of mud. The front wheels
+were very small, the back ones, high and fragile, carried the large body
+of the vehicle, which was swollen like the belly of an animal. Three
+white horses, with enormous heads and great round knees, were the first
+things one noticed. They were harnessed ready to draw this coach, which
+had something of the appearance of a monster in its massive structure.
+The horses seemed already asleep in front of the strange vehicle.
+
+The driver, Cesaire Horlaville, a little man with a big paunch, supple
+nevertheless, through his constant habit of climbing over the wheels to
+the top of the wagon, his face all aglow from exposure to the brisk air
+of the plains, to rain and storms, and also from the use of brandy, his
+eyes twitching from the effect of constant contact with wind and hail,
+appeared in the doorway of the hotel, wiping his mouth on the back of
+his hand. Large round baskets, full of frightened poultry, were standing
+in front of the peasant women. Cesaire Horlaville took them one after
+the other and packed them on the top of his coach; then more gently, he
+loaded on those containing eggs; finally he tossed up from below several
+little bags of grain, small packages wrapped in handkerchiefs, pieces of
+cloth, or paper. Then he opened the back door, and drawing a list from
+his pocket he called:
+
+“Monsieur le cure de Gorgeville.”
+
+The priest advanced. He was a large, powerful, robust man with a red
+face and a genial expression. He hitched up his cassock to lift his
+foot, just as the women hold up their skirts, and climbed into the
+coach.
+
+“The schoolmaster of Rollebose-les-Grinets.”
+
+The man hastened forward, tall, timid, wearing a long frock coat which
+fell to his knees, and he in turn disappeared through the open door.
+
+“Maitre Poiret, two seats.”
+
+Poiret approached, a tall, round-shouldered man, bent by the plow,
+emaciated through abstinence, bony, with a skin dried by a sparing use
+of water. His wife followed him, small and thin, like a tired animal,
+carrying a large green umbrella in her hands.
+
+“Maitre Rabot, two seats.”
+
+Rabot hesitated, being of an undecided nature. He asked:
+
+“You mean me?”
+
+The driver was going to answer with a jest, when Rabot dived head first
+towards the door, pushed forward by a vigorous shove from his wife, a
+tall, square woman with a large, round stomach like a barrel, and hands
+as large as hams.
+
+Rabot slipped into the wagon like a rat entering a hole.
+
+“Maitre Caniveau.”
+
+A large peasant, heavier than an ox, made the springs bend, and was in
+turn engulfed in the interior of the yellow chest.
+
+“Maitre Belhomme.”
+
+Belhomme, tall and thin, came forward, his neck bent, his head hanging,
+a handkerchief held to his ear as if he were suffering from a terrible
+toothache.
+
+All these people wore the blue blouse over quaint and antique coats of a
+black or greenish cloth, Sunday clothes which they would only uncover in
+the streets of Havre. Their heads were covered by silk caps at high
+as towers, the emblem of supreme elegance in the small villages of
+Normandy.
+
+Cesaire Horlaville closed the door, climbed up on his box and snapped
+his whip.
+
+The three horses awoke and, tossing their heads, shook their bells.
+
+The driver then yelling “Get up!” as loud as he could, whipped up his
+horses. They shook themselves, and, with an effort, started off at a
+slow, halting gait. And behind them came the coach, rattling its shaky
+windows and iron springs, making a terrible clatter of hardware and
+glass, while the passengers were tossed hither and thither like so many
+rubber balls.
+
+At first all kept silent out of respect for the priest, that they might
+not shock him. Being of a loquacious and genial disposition, he started
+the conversation.
+
+“Well, Maitre Caniveau,” said he, “how are you getting along?”
+
+The enormous farmer who, on account of his size, girth and stomach, felt
+a bond of sympathy for the representative of the Church, answered with a
+smile:
+
+“Pretty well, Monsieur le cure, pretty well. And how are you?”
+
+“Oh! I'm always well and healthy.”
+
+“And you, Maitre Poiret?” asked the abbe.
+
+“Oh! I'd be all right only the colzas ain't a-goin' to give much this
+year, and times are so hard that they are the only things worth while
+raisin'.”
+
+“Well, what can you expect? Times are hard.”
+
+“Hub! I should say they were hard,” sounded the rather virile voice of
+Rabot's big consort.
+
+As she was from a neighboring village, the priest only knew her by name.
+
+“Is that you, Blondel?” he said.
+
+“Yes, I'm the one that married Rabot.”
+
+Rabot, slender, timid, and self-satisfied, bowed smilingly, bending
+his head forward as though to say: “Yes, I'm the Rabot whom Blondel
+married.”
+
+Suddenly Maitre Belhomme, still holding his handkerchief to his ear,
+began groaning in a pitiful fashion. He was going “Oh-oh-oh!” and
+stamping his foot in order to show his terrible suffering.
+
+“You must have an awful toothache,” said the priest.
+
+The peasant stopped moaning for a minute and answered:
+
+“No, Monsieur le cure, it is not the teeth. It's my ear-away down at the
+bottom of my ear.”
+
+“Well, what have you got in your ear? A lump of wax?”
+
+“I don't know whether it's wax; but I know that it is a bug, a big bug,
+that crawled in while I was asleep in the haystack.”
+
+“A bug! Are you sure?”
+
+“Am I sure? As sure as I am of heaven, Monsieur le cure! I can feel
+it gnawing at the bottom of my ear! It's eating my head for sure! It's
+eating my head! Oh-oh-oh!” And he began to stamp his foot again.
+
+Great interest had been aroused among the spectators. Each one gave his
+bit of advice. Poiret claimed that it was a spider, the teacher, thought
+it might be a caterpillar. He had already seen such a thing once, at
+Campemuret, in Orne, where he had been for six years. In this case the
+caterpillar had gone through the head and out at the nose. But the man
+remained deaf in that ear ever after, the drum having been pierced.
+
+“It's more likely to be a worm,” said the priest.
+
+Maitre Belhomme, his head resting against the door, for he had been the
+last one to enter, was still moaning.
+
+“Oh--oh--oh! I think it must be an ant, a big ant--there it is biting
+again. Oh, Monsieur le cure, how it hurts! how it hurts!”
+
+“Have you seen the doctor?” asked Caniveau.
+
+“I should say not!”
+
+“Why?”
+
+The fear of the doctor seemed to cure Belhomme. He straightened up
+without, however, dropping his handkerchief.
+
+“What! You have money for them, for those loafers? He would have
+come once, twice, three times, four times, five times! That means two
+five-franc pieces, two five-franc pieces, for sure. And what would he
+have done, the loafer, tell me, what would he have done? Can you tell
+me?”
+
+Caniveau was laughing.
+
+“No, I don't know. Where are you going?”
+
+“I am going to Havre, to see Chambrelan.”
+
+“Who is Chambrelan?”
+
+“The healer, of course.”
+
+“What healer?”
+
+“The healer who cured my father.”
+
+“Your father?”
+
+“Yes, the healer who cured my father years ago.”
+
+“What was the matter with your father?”
+
+“A draught caught him in the back, so that he couldn't move hand or
+foot.”
+
+“Well, what did your friend Chambrelan do to him?”
+
+“He kneaded his back with both hands as though he were making bread! And
+he was all right in a couple of hours!”
+
+Belhomme thought that Chambrelan must also have used some charm, but he
+did not dare say so before the priest. Caniveau replied, laughing:
+
+“Are you sure it isn't a rabbit that you have in your ear? He might have
+taken that hole for his home. Wait, I'll make him run away.”
+
+Whereupon Caniveau, making a megaphone of his hands, began to mimic the
+barking of hounds. He snapped, howled, growled, barked. And everybody in
+the carriage began to roar, even the schoolmaster, who, as a rule, never
+ever smiled.
+
+However, as Belhomme seemed angry at their making fun of him, the priest
+changed the conversation and turning to Rabot's big wife, said:
+
+“You have a large family, haven't you?”
+
+“Oh, yes, Monsieur le cure--and it's a pretty hard matter to bring them
+up!”
+
+Rabot agreed, nodding his head as though to say: “Oh, yes, it's a hard
+thing to bring up!”
+
+“How many children?”
+
+She replied authoritatively in a strong, clear voice:
+
+“Sixteen children, Monsieur le cure, fifteen of them by my husband!”
+
+And Rabot smiled broadly, nodding his head. He was responsible for
+fifteen, he alone, Rabot! His wife said so! Therefore there could be no
+doubt about it. And he was proud!
+
+And whose was the sixteenth? She didn't tell. It was doubtless the
+first. Perhaps everybody knew, for no one was surprised. Even Caniveau
+kept mum.
+
+But Belhomme began to moan again:
+
+“Oh-oh-oh! It's scratching about in the bottom of my ear! Oh, dear, oh,
+dear!”
+
+The coach just then stopped at the Cafe Polyto. The priest said:
+
+“If someone were to pour a little water into your ear, it might perhaps
+drive it out. Do you want to try?”
+
+“Sure! I am willing.”
+
+And everybody got out in order to witness the operation. The priest
+asked for a bowl, a napkin and a glass of water, then he told the
+teacher to hold the patient's head over on one side, and, as soon as the
+liquid should have entered the ear, to turn his head over suddenly on
+the other side.
+
+But Caniveau, who was already peering into Belhomme's ear to see if he
+couldn't discover the beast, shouted:
+
+“Gosh! What a mess! You'll have to clear that out, old man. Your rabbit
+could never get through that; his feet would stick.”
+
+The priest in turn examined the passage and saw that it was too narrow
+and too congested for him to attempt to expel the animal. It was the
+teacher who cleared out this passage by means of a match and a bit of
+cloth. Then, in the midst of the general excitement, the priest poured
+into the passage half a glass of water, which trickled over the face
+through the hair and down the neck of the patient. Then the schoolmaster
+quickly twisted the head round over the bowl, as though he were trying
+to unscrew it. A couple of drops dripped into the white bowl. All the
+passengers rushed forward. No insect had come out.
+
+However, Belhomme exclaimed: “I don't feel anything any more.” The
+priest triumphantly exclaimed: “Certainly it has been drowned.”
+ Everybody was happy and got back into the coach.
+
+But hardly had they started when Belhomme began to cry out again. The
+bug had aroused itself and had become furious. He even declared that it
+had now entered his head and was eating his brain. He was howling with
+such contortions that Poirat's wife, thinking him possessed by the
+devil, began to cry and to cross herself. Then, the pain abating a
+little, the sick man began to tell how it was running round in his ear.
+With his finger he imitated the movements of the body, seeming to
+see it, to follow it with his eyes: “There is goes up again!
+Oh--oh--oh--what torture!”
+
+Caniveau was getting impatient. “It's the water that is making the bug
+angry. It is probably more accustomed to wine.”
+
+Everybody laughed, and he continued: “When we get to the Cafe Bourbeux,
+give it some brandy, and it won't bother you any more, I wager.”
+
+But Belhomme could contain himself no longer; he began howling as though
+his soul were being torn from his body. The priest was obliged to hold
+his head for him. They asked Cesaire Horlaville to stop at the nearest
+house. It was a farmhouse at the side of the road. Belhomme was carried
+into it and laid on the kitchen table in order to repeat the operation.
+Caniveau advised mixing brandy and water in order to benumb and perhaps
+kill the insect. But the priest preferred vinegar.
+
+They poured the liquid in drop by drop this time, that it might
+penetrate down to the bottom, and they left it several minutes in the
+organ that the beast had chosen for its home.
+
+A bowl had once more been brought; Belhomme was turned over bodily
+by the priest and Caniveau, while the schoolmaster was tapping on the
+healthy ear in order to empty the other.
+
+Cesaire Horlaville himself, whip in hand, had come in to observe the
+proceedings.
+
+Suddenly, at the bottom of the bowl appeared a little brown spot, no
+bigger than a tiny seed. However, it was moving. It was a flea! First
+there were cries of astonishment and then shouts of laughter. A flea!
+Well, that was a good joke, a mighty good one! Caniveau was slapping his
+thigh, Cesaire Horlaville snapped his whip, the priest laughed like a
+braying donkey, the teacher cackled as though he were sneezing, and the
+two women were giving little screams of joy, like the clucking of hens.
+
+Belhomme had seated himself on the table and had taken the bowl between
+his knees; he was observing, with serious attention and a vengeful anger
+in his eye, the conquered insect which was twisting round in the water.
+He grunted, “You rotten little beast!” and he spat on it.
+
+The driver, wild with joy, kept repeating: “A flea, a flea, ah! there
+you are, damned little flea, damned little flea, damned little flea!”
+ Then having calmed down a little, he cried: “Well, back to the coach!
+We've lost enough time.”
+
+
+
+
+DISCOVERY
+
+The steamer was crowded with people and the crossing promised to be
+good. I was going from Havre to Trouville.
+
+The ropes were thrown off, the whistle blew for the last time, the whole
+boat started to tremble, and the great wheels began to revolve, slowly
+at first, and then with ever-increasing rapidity.
+
+We were gliding along the pier, black with people. Those on board were
+waving their handkerchiefs, as though they were leaving for America, and
+their friends on shore were answering in the same manner.
+
+The big July sun was shining down on the red parasols, the light
+dresses, the joyous faces and on the ocean, barely stirred by a ripple.
+When we were out of the harbor, the little vessel swung round the big
+curve and pointed her nose toward the distant shore which was barely
+visible through the early morning mist. On our left was the broad
+estuary of the Seine, her muddy water, which never mingles with that
+of the ocean, making large yellow streaks clearly outlined against the
+immense sheet of the pure green sea.
+
+As soon as I am on a boat I feel the need of walking to and fro, like a
+sailor on watch. Why? I do not know. Therefore I began to thread my way
+along the deck through the crowd of travellers. Suddenly I heard my name
+called. I turned around. I beheld one of my old friends, Henri Sidoine,
+whom I had not seen for ten years.
+
+We shook hands and continued our walk together, talking of one thing
+or another. Suddenly Sidoine, who had been observing the crowd of
+passengers, cried out angrily:
+
+“It's disgusting, the boat is full of English people!”
+
+It was indeed full of them. The men were standing about, looking over
+the ocean with an all-important air, as though to say: “We are the
+English, the lords of the sea! Here we are!”
+
+The young girls, formless, with shoes which reminded one of the naval
+constructions of their fatherland, wrapped in multi-colored shawls, were
+smiling vacantly at the magnificent scenery. Their small heads, planted
+at the top of their long bodies, wore English hats of the strangest
+build.
+
+And the old maids, thinner yet, opening their characteristic jaws to the
+wind, seemed to threaten one with their long, yellow teeth. On passing
+them, one could notice the smell of rubber and of tooth wash.
+
+Sidoine repeated, with growing anger:
+
+“Disgusting! Can we never stop their coming to France?”
+
+I asked, smiling:
+
+“What have you got against them? As far as I am concerned, they don't
+worry me.”
+
+He snapped out:
+
+“Of course they don't worry you! But I married one of them.”
+
+I stopped and laughed at him.
+
+“Go ahead and tell me about it. Does she make you very unhappy?”
+
+He shrugged his shoulders.
+
+“No, not exactly.”
+
+“Then she--is not true to you?”
+
+“Unfortunately, she is. That would be cause for a divorce, and I could
+get rid of her.”
+
+“Then I'm afraid I don't understand!”
+
+“You don't understand? I'm not surprised. Well, she simply learned how
+to speak French--that's all! Listen.
+
+“I didn't have the least desire of getting married when I went to spend
+the summer at Etretat two years ago. There is nothing more dangerous
+than watering-places. You have no idea how it suits young girls. Paris
+is the place for women and the country for young girls.
+
+“Donkey rides, surf-bathing, breakfast on the grass, all these things
+are traps set for the marriageable man. And, really, there is nothing
+prettier than a child about eighteen, running through a field or picking
+flowers along the road.
+
+“I made the acquaintance of an English family who were stopping at the
+same hotel where I was. The father looked like those men you see over
+there, and the mother was like all other Englishwomen.
+
+“They had two sons, the kind of boys who play rough games with balls,
+bats or rackets from morning till night; then came two daughters, the
+elder a dry, shrivelled-up Englishwoman, the younger a dream of beauty,
+a heavenly blonde. When those chits make up their minds to be pretty,
+they are divine. This one had blue eyes, the kind of blue which seems to
+contain all the poetry, all the dreams, all the hopes and happiness of
+the world!
+
+“What an infinity of dreams is caused by two such eyes! How well they
+answer the dim, eternal question of our heart!
+
+“It must not be forgotten either that we Frenchmen adore foreign women.
+As soon as we meet a Russian, an Italian, a Swede, a Spaniard, or an
+Englishwoman with a pretty face, we immediately fall in love with her.
+We enthuse over everything which comes from outside--clothes, hats,
+gloves, guns and--women. But what a blunder!
+
+“I believe that that which pleases us in foreign women is their accent.
+As soon as a woman speaks our language badly we think she is charming,
+if she uses the wrong word she is exquisite and if she jabbers in an
+entirely unintelligible jargon, she becomes irresistible.
+
+“My little English girl, Kate, spoke a language to be marvelled at.
+At the beginning I could understand nothing, she invented so many new
+words; then I fell absolutely in love with this queer, amusing dialect.
+All maimed, strange, ridiculous terms became delightful in her mouth.
+Every evening, on the terrace of the Casino, we had long conversations
+which resembled spoken enigmas.
+
+“I married her! I loved her wildly, as one can only love in a dream. For
+true lovers only love a dream which has taken the form of a woman.
+
+“Well, my dear fellow, the most foolish thing I ever did was to give
+my wife a French teacher. As long as she slaughtered the dictionary and
+tortured the grammar I adored her. Our conversations were simple. They
+revealed to me her surprising gracefulness and matchless elegance; they
+showed her to me as a wonderful speaking jewel, a living doll made to
+be kissed, knowing, after a fashion, how to express what she loved. She
+reminded me of the pretty little toys which say 'papa' and 'mamma' when
+you pull a string.
+
+“Now she talks--badly--very badly. She makes as many mistakes as
+ever--but I can understand her.
+
+“I have opened my doll to look inside--and I have seen. And now I have
+to talk to her!
+
+“Ah! you don't know, as I do, the opinions, the ideas, the theories of
+a well-educated young English girl, whom I can blame in nothing, and
+who repeats to me from morning till night sentences from a French reader
+prepared in England for the use of young ladies' schools.
+
+“You have seen those cotillon favors, those pretty gilt papers, which
+enclose candies with an abominable taste. I have one of them. I tore it
+open. I wished to eat what was inside and it disgusted me so that I feel
+nauseated at seeing her compatriots.
+
+“I have married a parrot to whom some old English governess might have
+taught French. Do you understand?”
+
+The harbor of Trouville was now showing its wooden piers covered with
+people.
+
+I said:
+
+“Where is your wife?”
+
+He answered:
+
+“I took her back to Etretat.”
+
+“And you, where are you going?”
+
+“I? Oh, I am going to rest up here at Trouville.”
+
+Then, after a pause, he added:
+
+“You have no idea what a fool a woman can be at times!”
+
+
+
+
+THE ACCURSED BREAD
+
+Daddy Taille had three daughters: Anna, the eldest, who was scarcely
+ever mentioned in the family; Rose, the second girl, who was eighteen,
+and Clara, the youngest, who was a girl of fifteen.
+
+Old Taille was a widower and a foreman in M. Lebrument's button
+manufactory. He was a very upright man, very well thought of,
+abstemious; in fact, a sort of model workman. He lived at Havre, in the
+Rue d'Angouleme.
+
+When Anna ran away from home the old man flew into a fearful rage. He
+threatened to kill the head clerk in a large draper's establishment in
+that town, whom he suspected. After a time, when he was told by various
+people that she was very steady and investing money in government
+securities, that she was no gadabout, but was a great friend of Monsieur
+Dubois, who was a judge of the Tribunal of Commerce, the father was
+appeased.
+
+He even showed some anxiety as to how she was getting on, and asked some
+of her old friends who had been to see her, and when told that she had
+her own furniture, and that her mantelpiece was covered with vases and
+the walls with pictures, that there were clocks and carpets everywhere,
+he gave a broad contented smile. He had been working for thirty years
+to get together a wretched five or six thousand francs. This girl was
+evidently no fool.
+
+One fine morning the son of Touchard, the cooper, at the other end of
+the street, came and asked him for the hand of Rose, the second girl.
+The old man's heart began to beat, for the Touchards were rich and in a
+good position. He was decidedly lucky with his girls.
+
+The marriage was agreed upon, and it was settled that it should be a
+grand affair, and the wedding dinner was to be held at Sainte-Adresse,
+at Mother Jusa's restaurant. It would cost a lot certainly, but never
+mind, it did not matter just for once in a way.
+
+But one morning, just as the old man was going home to luncheon with his
+two daughters, the door opened suddenly, and Anna appeared. She was well
+dressed and looked undeniably pretty and nice. She threw her arms
+round her father's neck before he could say a word, then fell into her
+sisters' arms with many tears and then asked for a plate, so that she
+might share the family soup. Taille was moved to tears in his turn and
+said several times:
+
+“That is right, dear, that is right.”
+
+Then she told them about herself. She did not wish Rose's wedding to
+take place at Sainte-Adresse--certainly not. It should take place at her
+house and would cost her father nothing. She had settled everything
+and arranged everything, so it was “no good to say any more about
+it--there!”
+
+“Very well, my dear! very well!” the old man said; “we will leave it
+so.” But then he felt some doubt. Would the Touchards consent? But Rose,
+the bride-elect, was surprised and asked: “Why should they object, I
+should like to know? Just leave that to me; I will talk to Philip about
+it.”
+
+She mentioned it to her lover the very same day, and he declared it
+would suit him exactly. Father and Mother Touchard were naturally
+delighted at the idea of a good dinner which would cost them nothing and
+said:
+
+“You may be quite sure that everything will be in first-rate style.”
+
+They asked to be allowed to bring a friend, Madame Florence, the cook on
+the first floor, and Anna agreed to everything.
+
+The wedding was fixed for the last Tuesday of the month.
+
+After the civil formalities and the religious ceremony the wedding party
+went to Anna's house. Among those whom the Tailles had brought was
+a cousin of a certain age, a Monsieur Sauvetanin, a man given to
+philosophical reflections, serious, and always very self-possessed, and
+Madame Lamondois, an old aunt.
+
+Monsieur Sautevanin had been told off to give Anna his arm, as they were
+looked upon as the two most important persons in the company.
+
+As soon as they had arrived at the door of Anna's house she let go her
+companion's arm, and ran on ahead, saying: “I will show you the way,”
+ and ran upstairs while the invited guests followed more slowly; and,
+when they got upstairs, she stood on one side to let them pass, and they
+rolled their eyes and turned their heads in all directions to admire
+this mysterious and luxurious dwelling.
+
+The table was laid in the drawing-room, as the dining-room had been
+thought too small. Extra knives, forks and spoons had been hired from a
+neighboring restaurant, and decanters stood full of wine under the rays
+of the sun which shone in through the window.
+
+The ladies went into the bedroom to take off their shawls and bonnets,
+and Father Touchard, who was standing at the door, made funny and
+suggestive signs to the men, with many a wink and nod. Daddy Taille,
+who thought a great deal of himself, looked with fatherly pride at his
+child's well-furnished rooms and went from one to the other, holding his
+hat in his hand, making a mental inventory of everything, and walking
+like a verger in a church.
+
+Anna went backward and forward, ran about giving orders and hurrying on
+the wedding feast. Soon she appeared at the door of the dining-room and
+cried: “Come here, all of you, for a moment,” and as the twelve guests
+entered the room they saw twelve glasses of Madeira on a small table.
+
+Rose and her husband had their arms round each other's waists and were
+kissing each other in every corner. Monsieur Sauvetanin never took his
+eyes off Anna.
+
+They sat down, and the wedding breakfast began, the relations sitting at
+one end of the table and the young people at the other. Madame Touchard,
+the mother, presided on the right and the bride on the left. Anna looked
+after everybody, saw that the glasses were kept filled and the
+plates well supplied. The guests evidently felt a certain respectful
+embarrassment at the sight of all the sumptuousness of the rooms and at
+the lavish manner in which they were treated. They all ate heartily of
+the good things provided, but there were no jokes such as are prevalent.
+at weddings of that sort; it was all too grand, and it made them feel
+uncomfortable. Old Madame Touchard, who was fond of a bit of fun, tried
+to enliven matters a little, and at the beginning of the dessert she
+exclaimed: “I say, Philip, do sing us something.” The neighbors in their
+street considered that he had the finest voice in all Havre.
+
+The bridegroom got up, smiled, and, turning to his sister-in-law, from
+politeness and gallantry, tried to think of something suitable for
+the occasion, something serious and correct, to harmonize with the
+seriousness of the repast.
+
+Anna had a satisfied look on her face, and leaned back in her chair to
+listen, and all assumed looks of attention, though prepared to smile
+should smiles he called for.
+
+The singer announced “The Accursed Bread,” and, extending his right arm,
+which made his coat ruck up into his neck, he began.
+
+It was decidedly long, three verses of eight lines each, with the last
+line and the last but one repeated twice.
+
+All went well for the first two verses; they were the usual commonplaces
+about bread gained by honest labor and by dishonesty. The aunt and the
+bride wept outright. The cook, who was present, at the end of the first
+verse looked at a roll which she held in her hand, with streaming eyes,
+as if it applied to her, while all applauded vigorously. At the end of
+the second verse the two servants, who were standing with their backs to
+the wall, joined loudly in the chorus, and the aunt and the bride wept
+outright.
+
+Daddy Taille blew his nose with the noise of a trombone, and old
+Touchard brandished a whole loaf half over the table, and the cook shed
+silent tears on the crust which she was still holding.
+
+Amid the general emotion Monsieur Sauvetanin said:
+
+“That is the right sort of song; very different from the nasty, risky
+things one generally hears at weddings.”
+
+Anna, who was visibly affected, kissed her hand to her sister and
+pointed to her husband with an affectionate nod, as if to congratulate
+her.
+
+Intoxicated by his success, the young man continued, and unfortunately
+the last verse contained words about the “bread of dishonor” gained by
+young girls who had been led astray. No one took up the refrain about
+this bread, supposed to be eaten with tears, except old Touchard and the
+two servants. Anna had grown deadly pale and cast down her eyes, while
+the bridegroom looked from one to the other without understanding the
+reason for this sudden coldness, and the cook hastily dropped the crust
+as if it were poisoned.
+
+Monsieur Sauvetanin said solemnly, in order to save the situation: “That
+last couplet is not at all necessary;” and Daddy Taille, who had got red
+up to his ears, looked round the table fiercely.
+
+Then Anna, her eyes swimming in tears, told the servants in the
+faltering voice of a woman trying to stifle her sobs, to bring the
+champagne.
+
+All the guests were suddenly seized with exuberant joy, and all their
+faces became radiant again. And when old Touchard, who had seen, felt
+and understood nothing of what was going on, and pointing to the guests
+so as to emphasize his words, sang the last words of the refrain:
+
+“Children, I warn you all to eat not of that bread,” the whole company,
+when they saw the champagne bottles, with their necks covered with gold
+foil, appear, burst out singing, as if electrified by the sight:
+
+“Children, I warn you all to eat not of that bread.”
+
+
+
+
+THE DOWRY
+
+The marriage of Maitre Simon Lebrument with Mademoiselle Jeanne Cordier
+was a surprise to no one. Maitre Lebrument had bought out the practice
+of Maitre Papillon; naturally, he had to have money to pay for it; and
+Mademoiselle Jeanne Cordier had three hundred thousand francs clear in
+currency, and in bonds payable to bearer.
+
+Maitre Lebrument was a handsome man. He was stylish, although in a
+provincial way; but, nevertheless, he was stylish--a rare thing at
+Boutigny-le-Rebours.
+
+Mademoiselle Cordier was graceful and fresh-looking, although a trifle
+awkward; nevertheless, she was a handsome girl, and one to be desired.
+
+The marriage ceremony turned all Boutigny topsy-turvy. Everybody admired
+the young couple, who quickly returned home to domestic felicity,
+having decided simply to take a short trip to Paris, after a few days of
+retirement.
+
+This tete-a-tete was delightful, Maitre Lebrument having shown just the
+proper amount of delicacy. He had taken as his motto: “Everything
+comes to him who waits.” He knew how to be at the same time patient and
+energetic. His success was rapid and complete.
+
+After four days, Madame Lebrument adored her husband. She could not get
+along without him. She would sit on his knees, and taking him by the
+ears she would say: “Open your mouth and shut your eyes.” He would open
+his mouth wide and partly close his eyes, and he would try to nip her
+fingers as she slipped some dainty between his teeth. Then she would
+give him a kiss, sweet and long, which would make chills run up and down
+his spine. And then, in his turn, he would not have enough caresses to
+please his wife from morning to night and from night to morning.
+
+When the first week was over, he said to his young companion:
+
+“If you wish, we will leave for Paris next Tuesday. We will be like two
+lovers, we will go to the restaurants, the theatres, the concert halls,
+everywhere, everywhere!”
+
+She was ready to dance for joy.
+
+“Oh! yes, yes. Let us go as soon as possible.”
+
+He continued:
+
+“And then, as we must forget nothing, ask your father to have your dowry
+ready; I shall pay Maitre Papillon on this trip.”
+
+She answered:
+
+“All right: I will tell him to-morrow morning.”
+
+And he took her in his arms once more, to renew those sweet games of
+love which she had so enjoyed for the past week.
+
+The following Tuesday, father-in-law and mother-in-law went to the
+station with their daughter and their son-in-law who were leaving for
+the capital.
+
+The father-in-law said:
+
+“I tell you it is very imprudent to carry so much money about in a
+pocketbook.” And the young lawyer smiled.
+
+“Don't worry; I am accustomed to such things. You understand that, in
+my profession, I sometimes have as much as a million about me. In this
+manner, at least we avoid a great amount of red tape and delay. You
+needn't worry.”
+
+The conductor was crying:
+
+“All aboard for Paris!”
+
+They scrambled into a car, where two old ladies were already seated.
+
+Lebrument whispered into his wife's ear:
+
+“What a bother! I won't be able to smoke.”
+
+She answered in a low voice
+
+“It annoys me too, but not an account of your cigar.”
+
+The whistle blew and the train started. The trip lasted about an hour,
+during which time they did not say very much to each other, as the two
+old ladies did not go to sleep.
+
+As soon as they were in front of the Saint-Lazare Station, Maitre
+Lebrument said to his wife:
+
+“Dearie, let us first go over to the Boulevard and get something to eat;
+then we can quietly return and get our trunk and bring it to the hotel.”
+
+She immediately assented.
+
+“Oh! yes. Let's eat at the restaurant. Is it far?”
+
+He answered:
+
+“Yes, it's quite a distance, but we will take the omnibus.”
+
+She was surprised:
+
+“Why don't we take a cab?”
+
+He began to scold her smilingly:
+
+“Is that the way you save money? A cab for a five minutes' ride at six
+cents a minute! You would deprive yourself of nothing.”
+
+“That's so,” she said, a little embarrassed.
+
+A big omnibus was passing by, drawn by three big horses, which were
+trotting along. Lebrument called out:
+
+“Conductor! Conductor!”
+
+The heavy carriage stopped. And the young lawyer, pushing his wife, said
+to her quickly:
+
+“Go inside; I'm going up on top, so that I may smoke at least one
+cigarette before lunch.”
+
+She had no time to answer. The conductor, who had seized her by the arm
+to help her up the step, pushed her inside, and she fell into a seat,
+bewildered, looking through the back window at the feet of her husband
+as he climbed up to the top of the vehicle.
+
+And she sat there motionless, between a fat man who smelled of cheap
+tobacco and an old woman who smelled of garlic.
+
+All the other passengers were lined up in silence--a grocer's boy, a
+young girl, a soldier, a gentleman with gold-rimmed spectacles and a
+big silk hat, two ladies with a self-satisfied and crabbed look, which
+seemed to say: “We are riding in this thing, but we don't have to,” two
+sisters of charity and an undertaker. They looked like a collection of
+caricatures.
+
+The jolting of the wagon made them wag their heads and the shaking of
+the wheels seemed to stupefy them--they all looked as though they were
+asleep.
+
+The young woman remained motionless.
+
+“Why didn't he come inside with me?” she was saying to herself. An
+unaccountable sadness seemed to be hanging over her. He really need not
+have acted so.
+
+The sisters motioned to the conductor to stop, and they got off one
+after the other, leaving in their wake the pungent smell of camphor. The
+bus started tip and soon stopped again. And in got a cook, red-faced and
+out of breath. She sat down and placed her basket of provisions on her
+knees. A strong odor of dish-water filled the vehicle.
+
+“It's further than I imagined,” thought Jeanne.
+
+The undertaker went out, and was replaced by a coachman who seemed to
+bring the atmosphere of the stable with him. The young girl had as
+a successor a messenger, the odor of whose feet showed that he was
+continually walking.
+
+The lawyer's wife began to feel ill at ease, nauseated, ready to cry
+without knowing why.
+
+Other persons left and others entered. The stage went on through
+interminable streets, stopping at stations and starting again.
+
+“How far it is!” thought Jeanne. “I hope he hasn't gone to sleep! He has
+been so tired the last few days.”
+
+Little by little all the passengers left. She was left alone, all alone.
+The conductor cried:
+
+“Vaugirard!”
+
+Seeing that she did not move, he repeated:
+
+“Vaugirard!”
+
+She looked at him, understanding that he was speaking to her, as there
+was no one else there. For the third time the man said:
+
+“Vaugirard!”
+
+Then she asked:
+
+“Where are we?”
+
+He answered gruffly:
+
+“We're at Vaugirard, of course! I have been yelling it for the last half
+hour!”
+
+“Is it far from the Boulevard?” she said.
+
+“Which boulevard?”
+
+“The Boulevard des Italiens.”
+
+“We passed that a long time ago!”
+
+“Would you mind telling my husband?”
+
+“Your husband! Where is he?”
+
+“On the top of the bus.”
+
+“On the top! There hasn't been anybody there for a long time.”
+
+She started, terrified.
+
+“What? That's impossible! He got on with me. Look well! He must be
+there.”
+
+The conductor was becoming uncivil:
+
+“Come on, little one, you've talked enough! You can find ten men
+for every one that you lose. Now run along. You'll find another one
+somewhere.”
+
+Tears were coming to her eyes. She insisted:
+
+“But, monsieur, you are mistaken; I assure you that you must be
+mistaken. He had a big portfolio under his arm.”
+
+The man began to laugh:
+
+“A big portfolio! Oh, yes! He got off at the Madeleine. He got rid of
+you, all right! Ha! ha! ha!”
+
+The stage had stopped. She got out and, in spite of herself, she looked
+up instinctively to the roof of the bus. It was absolutely deserted.
+
+Then she began to cry, and, without thinking that anybody was listening
+or watching her, she said out loud:
+
+“What is going to become of me?”
+
+An inspector approached:
+
+“What's the matter?”
+
+The conductor answered, in a bantering tone of voice:
+
+“It's a lady who got left by her husband during the trip.”
+
+The other continued:
+
+“Oh! that's nothing. You go about your business.”
+
+Then he turned on his heels and walked away.
+
+She began to walk straight ahead, too bewildered, too crazed even to
+understand what had happened to her. Where was she to go? What could
+she do? What could have happened to him? How could he have made such a
+mistake? How could he have been so forgetful?
+
+She had two francs in her pocket. To whom could she go? Suddenly she
+remembered her cousin Barral, one of the assistants in the offices of
+the Ministry of the Navy.
+
+She had just enough to pay for a cab. She drove to his house. He met her
+just as he was leaving for his office. He was carrying a large portfolio
+under his arm, just like Lebrument.
+
+She jumped out of the carriage.
+
+“Henry!” she cried.
+
+He stopped, astonished:
+
+“Jeanne! Here--all alone! What are you doing? Where have you come from?”
+
+Her eyes full of tears, she stammered:
+
+“My husband has just got lost!”
+
+“Lost! Where?”
+
+“On an omnibus.”
+
+“On an omnibus?”
+
+Weeping, she told him her whole adventure.
+
+He listened, thought, and then asked:
+
+“Was his mind clear this morning?”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“Good. Did he have much money with him?”
+
+“Yes, he was carrying my dowry.”
+
+“Your dowry! The whole of it?”
+
+“The whole of it--in order to pay for the practice which he bought.”
+
+“Well, my dear cousin, by this time your husband must be well on his way
+to Belgium.”
+
+She could not understand. She kept repeating:
+
+“My husband--you say--”
+
+“I say that he has disappeared with your--your capital--that's all!”
+
+She stood there, a prey to conflicting emotions, sobbing.
+
+“Then he is--he is--he is a villain!”
+
+And, faint from excitement, she leaned her head on her cousin's shoulder
+and wept.
+
+As people were stopping to look at them, he pushed her gently into the
+vestibule of his house, and, supporting her with his arm around her
+waist, he led her up the stairs, and as his astonished servant opened
+the door, he ordered:
+
+“Sophie, run to the restaurant and get a luncheon for two. I am not
+going to the office to-day.”
+
+
+
+
+THE DIARY OF A MADMAN
+
+He was dead--the head of a high tribunal, the upright magistrate
+whose irreproachable life was a proverb in all the courts of France.
+Advocates, young counsellors, judges had greeted him at sight of his
+large, thin, pale face lighted up by two sparkling deep-set eyes, bowing
+low in token of respect.
+
+He had passed his life in pursuing crime and in protecting the weak.
+Swindlers and murderers had no more redoubtable enemy, for he seemed to
+read the most secret thoughts of their minds.
+
+He was dead, now, at the age of eighty-two, honored by the homage and
+followed by the regrets of a whole people. Soldiers in red trousers had
+escorted him to the tomb and men in white cravats had spoken words and
+shed tears that seemed to be sincere beside his grave.
+
+But here is the strange paper found by the dismayed notary in the desk
+where he had kept the records of great criminals! It was entitled: WHY?
+
+20th June, 1851. I have just left court. I have condemned Blondel to
+death! Now, why did this man kill his five children? Frequently one
+meets with people to whom the destruction of life is a pleasure. Yes,
+yes, it should be a pleasure, the greatest of all, perhaps, for is not
+killing the next thing to creating? To make and to destroy! These two
+words contain the history of the universe, all the history of worlds,
+all that is, all! Why is it not intoxicating to kill?
+
+25th June. To think that a being is there who lives, who walks, who
+runs. A being? What is a being? That animated thing, that bears in it
+the principle of motion and a will ruling that motion. It is attached to
+nothing, this thing. Its feet do not belong to the ground. It is a grain
+of life that moves on the earth, and this grain of life, coming I know
+not whence, one can destroy at one's will. Then nothing--nothing more.
+It perishes, it is finished.
+
+26th June. Why then is it a crime to kill? Yes, why? On the contrary, it
+is the law of nature. The mission of every being is to kill; he kills
+to live, and he kills to kill. The beast kills without ceasing, all day,
+every instant of his existence. Man kills without ceasing, to nourish
+himself; but since he needs, besides, to kill for pleasure, he has
+invented hunting! The child kills the insects he finds, the little
+birds, all the little animals that come in his way. But this does not
+suffice for the irresistible need to massacre that is in us. It is not
+enough to kill beasts; we must kill man too. Long ago this need was
+satisfied by human sacrifices. Now the requirements of social life
+have made murder a crime. We condemn and punish the assassin! But as we
+cannot live without yielding to this natural and imperious instinct of
+death, we relieve ourselves, from time to time, by wars. Then a whole
+nation slaughters another nation. It is a feast of blood, a feast that
+maddens armies and that intoxicates civilians, women and children, who
+read, by lamplight at night, the feverish story of massacre.
+
+One might suppose that those destined to accomplish these butcheries of
+men would be despised! No, they are loaded with honors. They are clad
+in gold and in resplendent garments; they wear plumes on their heads and
+ornaments on their breasts, and they are given crosses, rewards, titles
+of every kind. They are proud, respected, loved by women, cheered by the
+crowd, solely because their mission is to shed human blood; They drag
+through the streets their instruments of death, that the passer-by, clad
+in black, looks on with envy. For to kill is the great law set by nature
+in the heart of existence! There is nothing more beautiful and honorable
+than killing!
+
+30th June. To kill is the law, because nature loves eternal youth. She
+seems to cry in all her unconscious acts: “Quick! quick! quick!” The
+more she destroys, the more she renews herself.
+
+2d July. A human being--what is a human being? Through thought it is a
+reflection of all that is; through memory and science it is an abridged
+edition of the universe whose history it represents, a mirror of things
+and of nations, each human being becomes a microcosm in the macrocosm.
+
+3d July. It must be a pleasure, unique and full of zest, to kill; to
+have there before one the living, thinking being; to make therein a
+little hole, nothing but a little hole, to see that red thing flow which
+is the blood, which makes life; and to have before one only a heap of
+limp flesh, cold, inert, void of thought!
+
+5th August. I, who have passed my life in judging, condemning, killing
+by the spoken word, killing by the guillotine those who had killed by
+the knife, I, I, if I should do as all the assassins have done whom I
+have smitten, I--I--who would know it?
+
+10th August. Who would ever know? Who would ever suspect me, me, me,
+especially if I should choose a being I had no interest in doing away
+with?
+
+15th August. The temptation has come to me. It pervades my whole being;
+my hands tremble with the desire to kill.
+
+22d August. I could resist no longer. I killed a little creature as an
+experiment, for a beginning. Jean, my servant, had a goldfinch in a
+cage hung in the office window. I sent him on an errand, and I took the
+little bird in my hand, in my hand where I felt its heart beat. It was
+warm. I went up to my room. From time to time I squeezed it tighter; its
+heart beat faster; this was atrocious and delicious. I was near choking
+it. But I could not see the blood.
+
+Then I took scissors, short-nail scissors, and I cut its throat with
+three slits, quite gently. It opened its bill, it struggled to escape
+me, but I held it, oh! I held it--I could have held a mad dog--and I saw
+the blood trickle.
+
+And then I did as assassins do--real ones. I washed the scissors, I
+washed my hands. I sprinkled water and took the body, the corpse, to the
+garden to hide it. I buried it under a strawberry-plant. It will never
+be found. Every day I shall eat a strawberry from that plant. How one
+can enjoy life when one knows how!
+
+My servant cried; he thought his bird flown. How could he suspect me?
+Ah! ah!
+
+25th August. I must kill a man! I must--
+
+30th August. It is done. But what a little thing! I had gone for a walk
+in the forest of Vernes. I was thinking of nothing, literally nothing.
+A child was in the road, a little child eating a slice of bread and
+butter.
+
+He stops to see me pass and says, “Good-day, Mr. President.”
+
+And the thought enters my head, “Shall I kill him?”
+
+I answer: “You are alone, my boy?”
+
+“Yes, sir.”
+
+“All alone in the wood?”
+
+“Yes, sir.”
+
+The wish to kill him intoxicated me like wine. I approached him quite
+softly, persuaded that he was going to run away. And, suddenly, I seized
+him by the throat. He looked at me with terror in his eyes--such eyes!
+He held my wrists in his little hands and his body writhed like a
+feather over the fire. Then he moved no more. I threw the body in the
+ditch, and some weeds on top of it. I returned home, and dined well.
+What a little thing it was! In the evening I was very gay, light,
+rejuvenated; I passed the evening at the Prefect's. They found me witty.
+But I have not seen blood! I am tranquil.
+
+31st August. The body has been discovered. They are hunting for the
+assassin. Ah! ah!
+
+1st September. Two tramps have been arrested. Proofs are lacking.
+
+2d September. The parents have been to see me. They wept! Ah! ah!
+
+6th October. Nothing has been discovered. Some strolling vagabond must
+have done the deed. Ah! ah! If I had seen the blood flow, it seems to me
+I should be tranquil now! The desire to kill is in my blood; it is like
+the passion of youth at twenty.
+
+20th October. Yet another. I was walking by the river, after breakfast.
+And I saw, under a willow, a fisherman asleep. It was noon. A spade was
+standing in a potato-field near by, as if expressly, for me.
+
+I took it. I returned; I raised it like a club, and with one blow of the
+edge I cleft the fisherman's head. Oh! he bled, this one! Rose-colored
+blood. It flowed into the water, quite gently. And I went away with a
+grave step. If I had been seen! Ah! ah! I should have made an excellent
+assassin.
+
+25th October. The affair of the fisherman makes a great stir. His
+nephew, who fished with him, is charged with the murder.
+
+26th October. The examining magistrate affirms that the nephew is
+guilty. Everybody in town believes it. Ah! ah!
+
+27th October. The nephew makes a very poor witness. He had gone to the
+village to buy bread and cheese, he declared. He swore that his uncle
+had been killed in his absence! Who would believe him?
+
+28th October. The nephew has all but confessed, they have badgered him
+so. Ah! ah! justice!
+
+15th November. There are overwhelming proofs against the nephew, who was
+his uncle's heir. I shall preside at the sessions.
+
+25th January. To death! to death! to death! I have had him condemned
+to death! Ah! ah! The advocate-general spoke like an angel! Ah! ah! Yet
+another! I shall go to see him executed!
+
+10th March. It is done. They guillotined him this morning. He died very
+well! very well! That gave me pleasure! How fine it is to see a man's
+head cut off!
+
+Now, I shall wait, I can wait. It would take such a little thing to let
+myself be caught.
+
+The manuscript contained yet other pages, but without relating any new
+crime.
+
+Alienist physicians to whom the awful story has been submitted declare
+that there are in the world many undiscovered madmen as adroit and as
+much to be feared as this monstrous lunatic.
+
+
+
+
+THE MASK
+
+There was a masquerade ball at the Elysee-Montmartre that evening.
+It was the 'Mi-Careme', and the crowds were pouring into the brightly
+lighted passage which leads to the dance ball, like water flowing
+through the open lock of a canal. The loud call of the orchestra,
+bursting like a storm of sound, shook the rafters, swelled through the
+whole neighborhood and awoke, in the streets and in the depths of the
+houses, an irresistible desire to jump, to get warm, to have fun, which
+slumbers within each human animal.
+
+The patrons came from every quarter of Paris; there were people of all
+classes who love noisy pleasures, a little low and tinged with debauch.
+There were clerks and girls--girls of every description, some wearing
+common cotton, some the finest batiste; rich girls, old and covered with
+diamonds, and poor girls of sixteen, full of the desire to revel, to
+belong to men, to spend money. Elegant black evening suits, in search
+of fresh or faded but appetizing novelty, wandering through the excited
+crowds, looking, searching, while the masqueraders seemed moved above
+all by the desire for amusement. Already the far-famed quadrilles had
+attracted around them a curious crowd. The moving hedge which encircled
+the four dancers swayed in and out like a snake, sometimes nearer and
+sometimes farther away, according to the motions of the performers. The
+two women, whose lower limbs seemed to be attached to their bodies by
+rubber springs, were making wonderful and surprising motions with their
+legs. Their partners hopped and skipped about, waving their arms about.
+One could imagine their panting breath beneath their masks.
+
+One of them, who had taken his place in the most famous quadrille, as
+substitute for an absent celebrity, the handsome “Songe-au-Gosse,”
+ was trying to keep up with the tireless “Arete-de-Veau” and was making
+strange fancy steps which aroused the joy and sarcasm of the audience.
+
+He was thin, dressed like a dandy, with a pretty varnished mask on his
+face. It had a curly blond mustache and a wavy wig. He looked like a wax
+figure from the Musee Grevin, like a strange and fantastic caricature
+of the charming young man of fashion plates, and he danced with visible
+effort, clumsily, with a comical impetuosity. He appeared rusty beside
+the others when he tried to imitate their gambols: he seemed overcome
+by rheumatism, as heavy as a great Dane playing with greyhounds. Mocking
+bravos encouraged him. And he, carried away with enthusiasm, jigged
+about with such frenzy that suddenly, carried away by a wild spurt, he
+pitched head foremost into the living wall formed by the audience,
+which opened up before him to allow him to pass, then closed around the
+inanimate body of the dancer, stretched out on his face.
+
+Some men picked him up and carried him away, calling for a doctor. A
+gentleman stepped forward, young and elegant, in well-fitting evening
+clothes, with large pearl studs. “I am a professor of the Faculty of
+Medicine,” he said in a modest voice. He was allowed to pass, and he
+entered a small room full of little cardboard boxes, where the still
+lifeless dancer had been stretched cut on some chairs. The doctor at
+first wished to take off the mask, and he noticed that it was attached
+in a complicated manner, with a perfect network of small metal wires
+which cleverly bound it to his wig and covered the whole head. Even the
+neck was imprisoned in a false skin which continued the chin and was
+painted the color of flesh, being attached to the collar of the shirt.
+
+All this had to be cut with strong scissors. When the physician had slit
+open this surprising arrangement, from the shoulder to the temple, he
+opened this armor and found the face of an old man, worn out, thin and
+wrinkled. The surprise among those who had brought in this seemingly
+young dancer was so great that no one laughed, no one said a word.
+
+All were watching this sad face as he lay on the straw chairs, his eyes
+closed, his face covered with white hair, some long, falling from the
+forehead over the face, others short, growing around the face and the
+chin, and beside this poor head, that pretty little, neat varnished,
+smiling mask.
+
+The man regained consciousness after being inanimate for a long time,
+but he still seemed to be so weak and sick that the physician feared
+some dangerous complication. He asked: “Where do you live?”
+
+The old dancer seemed to be making an effort to remember, and then he
+mentioned the name of the street, which no one knew. He was asked for
+more definite information about the neighborhood. He answered with a
+great slowness, indecision and difficulty, which revealed his upset
+state of mind. The physician continued:
+
+“I will take you home myself.”
+
+Curiosity had overcome him to find out who this strange dancer, this
+phenomenal jumper might be. Soon the two rolled away in a cab to the
+other side of Montmartre.
+
+They stopped before a high building of poor appearance. They went up a
+winding staircase. The doctor held to the banister, which was so grimy
+that the hand stuck to it, and he supported the dizzy old man, whose
+forces were beginning to return. They stopped at the fourth floor.
+
+The door at which they had knocked was opened by an old woman, neat
+looking, with a white nightcap enclosing a thin face with sharp
+features, one of those good, rough faces of a hard-working and faithful
+woman. She cried out:
+
+“For goodness sake! What's the matter?”
+
+He told her the whole affair in a few words. She became reassured and
+even calmed the physician himself by telling him that the same thing had
+happened many times. She said: “He must be put to bed, monsieur, that is
+all. Let him sleep and tomorrow he will be all right.”
+
+The doctor continued: “But he can hardly speak.”
+
+“Oh! that's just a little drink, nothing more; he has eaten no dinner,
+in order to be nimble, and then he took a few absinthes in order to work
+himself up to the proper pitch. You see, drink gives strength to his
+legs, but it stops his thoughts and words. He is too old to dance as he
+does. Really, his lack of common sense is enough to drive one mad!”
+
+The doctor, surprised, insisted:
+
+“But why does he dance like that at his age?”
+
+She shrugged her shoulders and turned red from the anger which was
+slowly rising within her and she cried out:
+
+“Ah! yes, why? So that the people will think him young under his mask;
+so that the women will still take him for a young dandy and whisper
+nasty things into his ears; so that he can rub up against all their
+dirty skins, with their perfumes and powders and cosmetics. Ah! it's a
+fine business! What a life I have had for the last forty years! But we
+must first get him to bed, so that he may have no ill effects. Would
+you mind helping me? When he is like that I can't do anything with him
+alone.”
+
+The old man was sitting on his bed, with a tipsy look, his long white
+hair falling over his face. His companion looked at him with tender yet
+indignant eyes. She continued:
+
+“Just see the fine head he has for his age, and yet he has to go and
+disguise himself in order to make people think that he is young. It's a
+perfect shame! Really, he has a fine head, monsieur! Wait, I'll show it
+to you before putting him to bed.”
+
+She went to a table on which stood the washbasin a pitcher of water,
+soap and a comb and brush. She took the brush, returned to the bed and
+pushed back the drunkard's tangled hair. In a few seconds she made him
+look like a model fit for a great painter, with his long white locks
+flowing on his neck. Then she stepped back in order to observe him,
+saying: “There! Isn't he fine for his age?”
+
+“Very,” agreed the doctor, who was beginning to be highly amused.
+
+She added: “And if you had known him when he was twenty-five! But we
+must get him to bed, otherwise the drink will make him sick. Do you
+mind drawing off that sleeve? Higher-like that-that's right. Now the
+trousers. Wait, I will take his shoes off--that's right. Now, hold him
+upright while I open the bed. There--let us put him in. If you think
+that he is going to disturb himself when it is time for me to get in
+you are mistaken. I have to find a little corner any place I can. That
+doesn't bother him! Bah! You old pleasure seeker!”
+
+As soon as he felt himself stretched out in his sheets the old man
+closed his eyes, opened them closed them again, and over his whole face
+appeared an energetic resolve to sleep. The doctor examined him with an
+ever-increasing interest and asked: “Does he go to all the fancy balls
+and try to be a young man?” “To all of them, monsieur, and he comes back
+to me in the morning in a deplorable condition. You see, it's regret
+that leads him on and that makes him put a pasteboard face over his own.
+Yes, the regret of no longer being what he was and of no longer making
+any conquests!”
+
+He was sleeping now and beginning to snore. She looked at him with a
+pitying expression and continued: “Oh! how many conquests that man
+has made! More than one could believe, monsieur, more than the finest
+gentlemen of the world, than all the tenors and all the generals.”
+
+“Really? What did he do?”
+
+“Oh! it will surprise you at first, as you did not know him in his palmy
+days. When I met him it was also at a ball, for he has always frequented
+them. As soon as I saw him I was caught--caught like a fish on a hook.
+Ah! how pretty he was, monsieur, with his curly raven locks and black
+eyes as large as saucers! Indeed, he was good looking! He took me away
+that evening and I never have left him since, never, not even for a day,
+no matter what he did to me! Oh! he has often made it hard for me!”
+
+The doctor asked: “Are you married?”
+
+She answered simply: “Yes, monsieur, otherwise he would have dropped me
+as he did the others. I have been his wife and his servant, everything,
+everything that he wished. How he has made me cry--tears which I did
+not show him; for he would tell all his adventures to me--to me,
+monsieur--without understanding how it hurt me to listen.”
+
+“But what was his business?”
+
+“That's so. I forgot to tell you. He was the foreman at Martel's--a
+foreman such as they never had had--an artist who averaged ten francs an
+hour.”
+
+“Martel?--who is Martel?”
+
+“The hairdresser, monsieur, the great hairdresser of the Opera, who had
+all the actresses for customers. Yes, sir, all the smartest actresses
+had their hair dressed by Ambrose and they would give him tips that made
+a fortune for him. Ah! monsieur, all the women are alike, yes, all of
+them. When a man pleases their fancy they offer themselves to him. It
+is so easy--and it hurt me so to hear about it. For he would tell me
+everything--he simply could not hold his tongue--it was impossible.
+Those things please the men so much! They seem to get even more
+enjoyment out of telling than doing.
+
+“When I would see him coming in the evening, a little pale, with a
+pleased look and a bright eye, would say to myself: 'One more. I am sure
+that he has caught one more.' Then I felt a wild desire to question him
+and then, again, not to know, to stop his talking if he should begin.
+And we would look at each other.
+
+“I knew that he would not keep still, that he would come to the point. I
+could feel that from his manner, which seemed to laugh and say: 'I had a
+fine adventure to-day, Madeleine.' I would pretend to notice nothing,
+to guess nothing; I would set the table, bring on the soup and sit down
+opposite him.
+
+“At those times, monsieur, it was as if my friendship for him had been
+crushed in my body as with a stone. It hurt. But he did not understand;
+he did not know; he felt a need to tell all those things to some one, to
+boast, to show how much he was loved, and I was the only one he had to
+whom he could talk-the only one. And I would have to listen and drink it
+in, like poison.
+
+“He would begin to take his soup and then he would say: 'One more,
+Madeleine.'
+
+“And I would think: 'Here it comes! Goodness! what a man! Why did I ever
+meet him?'
+
+“Then he would begin: 'One more! And a beauty, too.' And it would be
+some little one from the Vaudeville or else from the Varietes, and some
+of the big ones, too, some of the most famous. He would tell me their
+names, how their apartments were furnished, everything, everything,
+monsieur. Heartbreaking details. And he would go over them and tell his
+story over again from beginning to end, so pleased with himself that I
+would pretend to laugh so that he would not get angry with me.
+
+“Everything may not have been true! He liked to glorify himself and was
+quite capable of inventing such things! They may perhaps also have been
+true! On those evenings he would pretend to be tired and wish to go to
+bed after supper. We would take supper at eleven, monsieur, for he could
+never get back from work earlier.
+
+“When he had finished telling about his adventure he would walk round
+the room and smoke cigarettes, and he was so handsome, with his mustache
+and curly hair, that I would think: 'It's true, just the same, what
+he is telling. Since I myself am crazy about that man, why should not
+others be the same?' Then I would feel like crying, shrieking, running
+away and jumping out of the window while I was clearing the table and
+he was smoking. He would yawn in order to show how tired he was, and he
+would say two or three times before going to bed: 'Ah! how well I shall
+sleep this evening!'
+
+“I bear him no ill will, because he did not know how he was hurting
+me. No, he could not know! He loved to boast about the women just as a
+peacock loves to show his feathers. He got to the point where he thought
+that all of them looked at him and desired him.
+
+“It was hard when he grew old. Oh, monsieur, when I saw his first white
+hair I felt a terrible shock and then a great joy--a wicked joy--but
+so great, so great! I said to myself: 'It's the end-it's the end.' It
+seemed as if I were about to be released from prison. At last I could
+have him to myself, all to myself, when the others would no longer want
+him.
+
+“It was one morning in bed. He was still sleeping and I leaned over
+him to wake him up with a kiss, when I noticed in his curls, over his
+temple, a little thread which shone like silver. What a surprise! I
+should not have thought it possible! At first I thought of tearing it
+out so that he would not see it, but as I looked carefully I noticed
+another farther up. White hair! He was going to have white hair! My
+heart began to thump and perspiration stood out all over me, but away
+down at the bottom I was happy.
+
+“It was mean to feel thus, but I did my housework with a light heart
+that morning, without waking him up, and, as soon as he opened his eyes
+of his own accord, I said to him: 'Do you know what I discovered while
+you were asleep?'
+
+“'No.'
+
+“'I found white hairs.'
+
+“He started up as if I had tickled him and said angrily: 'It's not
+true!'
+
+“'Yes, it is. There are four of them over your left temple.'
+
+“He jumped out of bed and ran over to the mirror. He could not find
+them. Then I showed him the first one, the lowest, the little curly one,
+and I said: 'It's no wonder, after the life that you have been leading.
+In two years all will be over for you.'
+
+“Well, monsieur, I had spoken true; two years later one could not
+recognize him. How quickly a man changes! He was still handsome, but he
+had lost his freshness, and the women no longer ran after him. Ah! what
+a life I led at that time! How he treated me! Nothing suited him. He
+left his trade to go into the hat business, in which he ate up all his
+money. Then he unsuccessfully tried to be an actor, and finally he began
+to frequent public balls. Fortunately, he had had common sense enough to
+save a little something on which we now live. It is sufficient, but it
+is not enormous. And to think that at one time he had almost a fortune.
+
+“Now you see what he does. This habit holds him like a frenzy. He has to
+be young; he has to dance with women who smell of perfume and cosmetics.
+You poor old darling!”
+
+She was looking at her old snoring husband fondly, ready to cry. Then,
+gently tiptoeing up to him, she kissed his hair. The physician had risen
+and was getting ready to leave, finding nothing to say to this strange
+couple. Just as he was leaving she asked:
+
+“Would you mind giving me your address? If he should grow worse, I could
+go and get you.”
+
+
+
+
+THE PENGUINS' ROCK
+
+This is the season for penguins.
+
+From April to the end of May, before the Parisian visitors arrive, one
+sees, all at once, on the little beach at Etretat several old gentlemen,
+booted and belted in shooting costume. They spend four or five days at
+the Hotel Hauville, disappear, and return again three weeks later. Then,
+after a fresh sojourn, they go away altogether.
+
+One sees them again the following spring.
+
+These are the last penguin hunters, what remain of the old set. There
+were about twenty enthusiasts thirty or forty years ago; now there are
+only a few of the enthusiastic sportsmen.
+
+The penguin is a very rare bird of passage, with peculiar habits. It
+lives the greater part of the year in the latitude of Newfoundland and
+the islands of St. Pierre and Miquelon. But in the breeding season a
+flight of emigrants crosses the ocean and comes every year to the same
+spot to lay their eggs, to the Penguins' Rock near Etretat. They are
+found nowhere else, only there. They have always come there, have always
+been chased away, but return again, and will always return. As soon as
+the young birds are grown they all fly away, and disappear for a year.
+
+Why do they not go elsewhere? Why not choose some other spot on the long
+white, unending cliff that extends from the Pas-de-Calais to Havre? What
+force, what invincible instinct, what custom of centuries impels these
+birds to come back to this place? What first migration, what tempest,
+possibly, once cast their ancestors on this rock? And why do the
+children, the grandchildren, all the descendants of the first parents
+always return here?
+
+There are not many of them, a hundred at most, as if one single family,
+maintaining the tradition, made this annual pilgrimage.
+
+And each spring, as soon as the little wandering tribe has taken up its
+abode an the rock, the same sportsmen also reappear in the village. One
+knew them formerly when they were young; now they are old, but constant
+to the regular appointment which they have kept for thirty or forty
+years. They would not miss it for anything in the world.
+
+It was an April evening in one of the later years. Three of the old
+sportsmen had arrived; one was missing--M. d'Arnelles.
+
+He had written to no one, given no account of himself. But he was not
+dead, like so many of the rest; they would have heard of it. At length,
+tired of waiting for him, the other three sat down to table. Dinner was
+almost over when a carriage drove into the yard of the hotel, and the
+late corner presently entered the dining room.
+
+He sat down, in a good humor, rubbing his hands, and ate with zest. When
+one of his comrades remarked with surprise at his being in a frock-coat,
+he replied quietly:
+
+“Yes, I had no time to change my clothes.”
+
+They retired on leaving the table, for they had to set out before
+daybreak in order to take the birds unawares.
+
+There is nothing so pretty as this sport, this early morning expedition.
+
+At three o'clock in the morning the sailors awoke the sportsmen by
+throwing sand against the windows. They were ready in a few minutes and
+went down to the beach. Although it was still dark, the stars had paled
+a little. The sea ground the shingle on the beach. There was such a
+fresh breeze that it made one shiver slightly in spite of one's heavy
+clothing.
+
+Presently two boats were pushed down the beach, by the sailors, with a
+sound as of tearing cloth, and were floated on the nearest waves. The
+brown sail was hoisted, swelled a little, fluttered, hesitated and
+swelling out again as round as a paunch, carried the boats towards
+the large arched entrance that could be faintly distinguished in the
+darkness.
+
+The sky became clearer, the shadows seemed to melt away. The coast still
+seemed veiled, the great white coast, perpendicular as a wall.
+
+They passed through the Manne-Porte, an enormous arch beneath which a
+ship could sail; they doubled the promontory of La Courtine, passed the
+little valley of Antifer and the cape of the same name; and suddenly
+caught sight of a beach on which some hundreds of seagulls were perched.
+
+That was the Penguins' Rock. It was just a little protuberance of the
+cliff, and on the narrow ledges of rock the birds' heads might be seen
+watching the boats.
+
+They remained there, motionless, not venturing to fly off as yet.
+Some of them perched on the edges, seated upright, looked almost like
+bottles, for their little legs are so short that when they walk they
+glide along as if they were on rollers. When they start to fly they
+cannot make a spring and let themselves fall like stones almost down to
+the very men who are watching them.
+
+They know their limitation and the danger to which it subjects them, and
+cannot make up their minds to fly away.
+
+But the boatmen begin to shout, beating the sides of the boat with the
+wooden boat pins, and the birds, in affright, fly one by one into
+space until they reach the level of the waves. Then, moving their wings
+rapidly, they scud, scud along until they reach the open sea; if a
+shower of lead does not knock them into the water.
+
+For an hour the firing is kept up, obliging them to give up, one after
+another. Sometimes the mother birds will not leave their nests, and
+are riddled with shot, causing drops of blood to spurt out on the white
+cliff, and the animal dies without having deserted her eggs.
+
+The first day M. d'Arnelles fired at the birds with his habitual zeal;
+but when the party returned toward ten o'clock, beneath a brilliant sun,
+which cast great triangles of light on the white cliffs along the
+coast he appeared a little worried, and absentminded, contrary to his
+accustomed manner.
+
+As soon as they got on shore a kind of servant dressed in black came up
+to him and said something in a low tone. He seemed to reflect, hesitate,
+and then replied:
+
+“No, to-morrow.”
+
+The following day they set out again. This time M, d'Arnelles frequently
+missed his aim, although the birds were close by. His friends teased
+him, asked him if he were in love, if some secret sorrow was troubling
+his mind and heart. At length he confessed.
+
+“Yes, indeed, I have to leave soon, and that annoys me.”
+
+“What, you must leave? And why?”
+
+“Oh, I have some business that calls me back. I cannot stay any longer.”
+
+They then talked of other matters.
+
+As soon as breakfast was over the valet in black appeared. M. d'Arnelles
+ordered his carriage, and the man was leaving the room when the three
+sportsmen interfered, insisting, begging, and praying their friend to
+stay. One of them at last said:
+
+“Come now, this cannot be a matter of such importance, for you have
+already waited two days.”
+
+M. d'Arnelles, altogether perplexed, began to think, evidently baffled,
+divided between pleasure and duty, unhappy and disturbed.
+
+After reflecting for some time he stammered:
+
+“The fact is--the fact is--I am not alone here. I have my son-in-law.”
+
+There were exclamations and shouts of “Your son-in-law! Where is he?”
+
+He suddenly appeared confused and his face grew red.
+
+“What! do you not know? Why--why--he is in the coach house. He is dead.”
+
+They were all silent in amazement.
+
+M. d'Arnelles continued, more and more disturbed:
+
+“I had the misfortune to lose him; and as I was taking the body to
+my house, in Briseville, I came round this way so as not to miss our
+appointment. But you can see that I cannot wait any longer.”
+
+Then one of the sportsmen, bolder than the rest said:
+
+“Well, but--since he is dead--it seems to me that he can wait a day
+longer.”
+
+The others chimed in:
+
+“That cannot be denied.”
+
+M. d'Arnelles appeared to be relieved of a great weight, but a little
+uneasy, nevertheless, he asked:
+
+“But, frankly--do you think--”
+
+The three others, as one man, replied:
+
+“Parbleu! my dear boy, two days more or less can make no difference in
+his present condition.”
+
+And, perfectly calmly, the father-in-law turned to the undertaker's
+assistant, and said:
+
+“Well, then, my friend, it will be the day after tomorrow.”
+
+
+
+
+A FAMILY
+
+I was to see my old friend, Simon Radevin, of whom I had lost sight for
+fifteen years. At one time he was my most intimate friend, the friend
+who knows one's thoughts, with whom one passes long, quiet, happy
+evenings, to whom one tells one's secret love affairs, and who seems to
+draw out those rare, ingenious, delicate thoughts born of that sympathy
+that gives a sense of repose.
+
+For years we had scarcely been separated; we had lived, travelled,
+thought and dreamed together; had liked the same things, had admired
+the same books, understood the same authors, trembled with the same
+sensations, and very often laughed at the same individuals, whom we
+understood completely by merely exchanging a glance.
+
+Then he married. He married, quite suddenly, a little girl from the
+provinces, who had come to Paris in search of a husband. How in the
+world could that little thin, insipidly fair girl, with her weak hands,
+her light, vacant eyes, and her clear, silly voice, who was exactly like
+a hundred thousand marriageable dolls, have picked up that intelligent,
+clever young fellow? Can any one understand these things? No doubt he
+had hoped for happiness, simple, quiet and long-enduring happiness, in
+the arms of a good, tender and faithful woman; he had seen all that in
+the transparent looks of that schoolgirl with light hair.
+
+He had not dreamed of the fact that an active, living and vibrating man
+grows weary of everything as soon as he understands the stupid reality,
+unless, indeed, he becomes so brutalized that he understands nothing
+whatever.
+
+What would he be like when I met him again? Still lively, witty,
+light-hearted and enthusiastic, or in a state of mental torpor induced
+by provincial life? A man may change greatly in the course of fifteen
+years!
+
+The train stopped at a small station, and as I got out of the carriage,
+a stout, a very stout man with red cheeks and a big stomach rushed up to
+me with open arms, exclaiming: “George!” I embraced him, but I had not
+recognized him, and then I said, in astonishment: “By Jove! You have not
+grown thin!” And he replied with a laugh:
+
+“What did you expect? Good living, a good table and good nights! Eating
+and sleeping, that is my existence!”
+
+I looked at him closely, trying to discover in that broad face the
+features I held so dear. His eyes alone had not changed, but I no
+longer saw the same expression in them, and I said to myself: “If the
+expression be the reflection of the mind, the thoughts in that head are
+not what they used to be formerly; those thoughts which I knew so well.”
+
+Yet his eyes were bright, full of happiness and friendship, but they had
+not that clear, intelligent expression which shows as much as words the
+brightness of the intellect. Suddenly he said:
+
+“Here are my two eldest children.” A girl of fourteen, who was almost a
+woman, and a boy of thirteen, in the dress of a boy from a Lycee, came
+forward in a hesitating and awkward manner, and I said in a low voice:
+“Are they yours?” “Of course they are,” he replied, laughing. “How many
+have you?” “Five! There are three more at home.”
+
+He said this in a proud, self-satisfied, almost triumphant manner, and
+I felt profound pity, mingled with a feeling of vague contempt, for this
+vainglorious and simple reproducer of his species.
+
+I got into a carriage which he drove himself, and we set off through
+the town, a dull, sleepy, gloomy town where nothing was moving in the
+streets except a few dogs and two or three maidservants. Here and there
+a shopkeeper, standing at his door, took off his hat, and Simon returned
+his salute and told me the man's name; no doubt to show me that he knew
+all the inhabitants personally, and the thought struck me that he was
+thinking of becoming a candidate for the Chamber of Deputies, that dream
+of all those who bury themselves in the provinces.
+
+We were soon out of the town, and the carriage turned into a garden that
+was an imitation of a park, and stopped in front of a turreted house,
+which tried to look like a chateau.
+
+“That is my den,” said Simon, so that I might compliment him on it. “It
+is charming,” I replied.
+
+A lady appeared on the steps, dressed for company, and with company
+phrases all ready prepared. She was no longer the light-haired, insipid
+girl I had seen in church fifteen years previously, but a stout lady
+in curls and flounces, one of those ladies of uncertain age, without
+intellect, without any of those things that go to make a woman. In
+short, she was a mother, a stout, commonplace mother, a human breeding
+machine which procreates without any other preoccupation but her
+children and her cook-book.
+
+She welcomed me, and I went into the hall, where three children, ranged
+according to their height, seemed set out for review, like firemen
+before a mayor, and I said: “Ah! ah! so there are the others?” Simon,
+radiant with pleasure, introduced them: “Jean, Sophie and Gontran.”
+
+The door of the drawing-room was open. I went in, and in the depths of
+an easy-chair, I saw something trembling, a man, an old, paralyzed man.
+Madame Radevin came forward and said: “This is my grandfather, monsieur;
+he is eighty-seven.” And then she shouted into the shaking old man's
+ears: “This is a friend of Simon's, papa.” The old gentleman tried to
+say “good-day” to me, and he muttered: “Oua, oua, oua,” and waved his
+hand, and I took a seat saying: “You are very kind, monsieur.”
+
+Simon had just come in, and he said with a laugh: “So! You have made
+grandpapa's acquaintance. He is a treasure, that old man; he is the
+delight of the children. But he is so greedy that he almost kills
+himself at every meal; you have no idea what he would eat if he were
+allowed to do as he pleased. But you will see, you will see. He looks at
+all the sweets as if they were so many girls. You never saw anything so
+funny; you will see presently.”
+
+I was then shown to my room, to change my dress for dinner, and hearing
+a great clatter behind me on the stairs, I turned round and saw that all
+the children were following me behind their father; to do me honor, no
+doubt.
+
+My windows looked out across a dreary, interminable plain, an ocean
+of grass, of wheat and of oats, without a clump of trees or any rising
+ground, a striking and melancholy picture of the life which they must be
+leading in that house.
+
+A bell rang; it was for dinner, and I went downstairs. Madame Radevin
+took my arm in a ceremonious manner, and we passed into the dining-room.
+A footman wheeled in the old man in his armchair. He gave a greedy
+and curious look at the dessert, as he turned his shaking head with
+difficulty from one dish to the other.
+
+Simon rubbed his hands: “You will be amused,” he said; and all the
+children understanding that I was going to be indulged with the sight
+of their greedy grandfather, began to laugh, while their mother merely
+smiled and shrugged her shoulders, and Simon, making a speaking trumpet
+of his hands, shouted at the old man: “This evening there is sweet
+creamed rice!” The wrinkled face of the grandfather brightened, and
+he trembled more violently, from head to foot, showing that he had
+understood and was very pleased. The dinner began.
+
+“Just look!” Simon whispered. The old man did not like the soup, and
+refused to eat it; but he was obliged to do it for the good of his
+health, and the footman forced the spoon into his mouth, while the old
+man blew so energetically, so as not to swallow the soup, that it was
+scattered like a spray all over the table and over his neighbors. The
+children writhed with laughter at the spectacle, while their father, who
+was also amused, said: “Is not the old man comical?”
+
+During the whole meal they were taken up solely with him. He devoured
+the dishes on the table with his eyes, and tried to seize them and pull
+them over to him with his trembling hands. They put them almost within
+his reach, to see his useless efforts, his trembling clutches at them,
+the piteous appeal of his whole nature, of his eyes, of his mouth and
+of his nose as he smelt them, and he slobbered on his table napkin with
+eagerness, while uttering inarticulate grunts. And the whole family was
+highly amused at this horrible and grotesque scene.
+
+Then they put a tiny morsel on his plate, and he ate with feverish
+gluttony, in order to get something more as soon as possible, and when
+the sweetened rice was brought in, he nearly had a fit, and groaned with
+greediness, and Gontran called out to him:
+
+“You have eaten too much already; you can have no more.” And they
+pretended not to give him any. Then he began to cry; he cried and
+trembled more violently than ever, while all the children laughed. At
+last, however, they gave him his helping, a very small piece; and as
+he ate the first mouthful, he made a comical noise in his throat, and a
+movement with his neck as ducks do when they swallow too large a morsel,
+and when he had swallowed it, he began to stamp his feet, so as to get
+more.
+
+I was seized with pity for this saddening and ridiculous Tantalus, and
+interposed on his behalf:
+
+“Come, give him a little more rice!” But Simon replied: “Oh! no, my dear
+fellow, if he were to eat too much, it would harm him, at his age.”
+
+I held my tongue, and thought over those words. Oh, ethics! Oh, logic!
+Oh, wisdom! At his age! So they deprived him of his only remaining
+pleasure out of regard for his health! His health! What would he do with
+it, inert and trembling wreck that he was? They were taking care of his
+life, so they said. His life? How many days? Ten, twenty, fifty, or a
+hundred? Why? For his own sake? Or to preserve for some time longer the
+spectacle of his impotent greediness in the family.
+
+There was nothing left for him to do in this life, nothing whatever. He
+had one single wish left, one sole pleasure; why not grant him that last
+solace until he died?
+
+After we had played cards for a long time, I went up to my room and to
+bed; I was low-spirited and sad, sad, sad! and I sat at my window. Not
+a sound could be heard outside but the beautiful warbling of a bird in a
+tree, somewhere in the distance. No doubt the bird was singing in a low
+voice during the night, to lull his mate, who was asleep on her eggs.
+And I thought of my poor friend's five children, and pictured him to
+myself, snoring by the side of his ugly wife.
+
+
+
+
+SUICIDES
+
+To Georges Legrand.
+
+Hardly a day goes by without our reading a news item like the following
+in some newspaper:
+
+“On Wednesday night the people living in No. 40 Rue de-----, were
+awakened by two successive shots. The explosions seemed to come from the
+apartment occupied by M. X----. The door was broken in and the man was
+found bathed in his blood, still holding in one hand the revolver with
+which he had taken his life.
+
+“M. X----was fifty-seven years of age, enjoying a comfortable income,
+and had everything necessary to make him happy. No cause can be found
+for his action.”
+
+What terrible grief, what unknown suffering, hidden despair, secret
+wounds drive these presumably happy persons to suicide? We search, we
+imagine tragedies of love, we suspect financial troubles, and, as
+we never find anything definite, we apply to these deaths the word
+“mystery.”
+
+A letter found on the desk of one of these “suicides without cause,” and
+written during his last night, beside his loaded revolver, has come into
+our hands. We deem it rather interesting. It reveals none of those
+great catastrophes which we always expect to find behind these acts of
+despair; but it shows us the slow succession of the little vexations
+of life, the disintegration of a lonely existence, whose dreams have
+disappeared; it gives the reason for these tragic ends, which only
+nervous and high-strung people can understand.
+
+Here it is:
+
+“It is midnight. When I have finished this letter I shall kill myself.
+Why? I shall attempt to give the reasons, not for those who may read
+these lines, but for myself, to kindle my waning courage, to impress
+upon myself the fatal necessity of this act which can, at best, be only
+deferred.
+
+“I was brought up by simple-minded parents who were unquestioning
+believers. And I believed as they did.
+
+“My dream lasted a long time. The last veil has just been torn from my
+eyes.
+
+“During the last few years a strange change has been taking place within
+me. All the events of Life, which formerly had to me the glow of a
+beautiful sunset, are now fading away. The true meaning of things has
+appeared to me in its brutal reality; and the true reason for love has
+bred in me disgust even for this poetic sentiment: 'We are the eternal
+toys of foolish and charming illusions, which are always being renewed.'
+
+“On growing older, I had become partly reconciled to the awful mystery
+of life, to the uselessness of effort; when the emptiness of everything
+appeared to me in a new light, this evening, after dinner.
+
+“Formerly, I was happy! Everything pleased me: the passing women, the
+appearance of the streets, the place where I lived; and I even took an
+interest in the cut of my clothes. But the repetition of the same sights
+has had the result of filling my heart with weariness and disgust, just
+as one would feel were one to go every night to the same theatre.
+
+“For the last thirty years I have been rising at the same hour; and, at
+the same restaurant, for thirty years, I have been eating at the same
+hours the same dishes brought me by different waiters.
+
+“I have tried travel. The loneliness which one feels in strange places
+terrified me. I felt so alone, so small on the earth that I quickly
+started on my homeward journey.
+
+“But here the unchanging expression of my furniture, which has stood for
+thirty years in the same place, the smell of my apartments (for, with
+time, each dwelling takes on a particular odor) each night, these and
+other things disgust me and make me sick of living thus.
+
+“Everything repeats itself endlessly. The way in which I put my key in
+the lock, the place where I always find my matches, the first object
+which meets my eye when I enter the room, make me feel like jumping out
+of the window and putting an end to those monotonous events from which
+we can never escape.
+
+“Each day, when I shave, I feel an inordinate desire to cut my throat;
+and my face, which I see in the little mirror, always the same, with
+soap on my cheeks, has several times made me weak from sadness.
+
+“Now I even hate to be with people whom I used to meet with pleasure; I
+know them so well, I can tell just what they are going to say and what
+I am going to answer. Each brain is like a circus, where the same horse
+keeps circling around eternally. We must circle round always, around the
+same ideas, the same joys, the same pleasures, the same habits, the same
+beliefs, the same sensations of disgust.
+
+“The fog was terrible this evening. It enfolded the boulevard, where
+the street lights were dimmed and looked like smoking candles. A heavier
+weight than usual oppressed me. Perhaps my digestion was bad.
+
+“For good digestion is everything in life. It gives the inspiration to
+the artist, amorous desires to young people, clear ideas to thinkers,
+the joy of life to everybody, and it also allows one to eat heartily
+(which is one of the greatest pleasures). A sick stomach induces
+scepticism unbelief, nightmares and the desire for death. I have often
+noticed this fact. Perhaps I would not kill myself, if my digestion had
+been good this evening.
+
+“When I sat down in the arm-chair where I have been sitting every day
+for thirty years, I glanced around me, and just then I was seized by
+such a terrible distress that I thought I must go mad.
+
+“I tried to think of what I could do to run away from myself. Every
+occupation struck me as being worse even than inaction. Then I bethought
+me of putting my papers in order.
+
+“For a long time I have been thinking of clearing out my drawers; for,
+for the last thirty years, I have been throwing my letters and bills
+pell-mell into the same desk, and this confusion has often caused me
+considerable trouble. But I feel such moral and physical laziness at the
+sole idea of putting anything in order that I have never had the courage
+to begin this tedious business.
+
+“I therefore opened my desk, intending to choose among my old papers and
+destroy the majority of them.
+
+“At first I was bewildered by this array of documents, yellowed by age,
+then I chose one.
+
+“Oh! if you cherish life, never disturb the burial place of old letters!
+
+“And if, perchance, you should, take the contents by the handful, close
+your eyes that you may not read a word, so that you may not recognize
+some forgotten handwriting which may plunge you suddenly into a sea of
+memories; carry these papers to the fire; and when they are in ashes,
+crush them to an invisible powder, or otherwise you are lost--just as I
+have been lost for an hour.
+
+“The first letters which I read did not interest me greatly. They were
+recent, and came from living men whom I still meet quite often, and
+whose presence does not move me to any great extent. But all at once
+one envelope made me start. My name was traced on it in a large, bold
+handwriting; and suddenly tears came to my eyes. That letter was from
+my dearest friend, the companion of my youth, the confidant of my hopes;
+and he appeared before me so clearly, with his pleasant smile and his
+hand outstretched, that a cold shiver ran down my back. Yes, yes, the
+dead come back, for I saw him! Our memory is a more perfect world than
+the universe: it gives back life to those who no longer exist.
+
+“With trembling hand and dimmed eyes I reread everything that he told
+me, and in my poor sobbing heart I felt a wound so painful that I began
+to groan as a man whose bones are slowly being crushed.
+
+“Then I travelled over my whole life, just as one travels along a river.
+I recognized people, so long forgotten that I no longer knew their
+names. Their faces alone lived in me. In my mother's letters I saw again
+the old servants, the shape of our house and the little insignificant
+odds and ends which cling to our minds.
+
+“Yes, I suddenly saw again all my mother's old gowns, the different
+styles which she adopted and the several ways in which she dressed her
+hair. She haunted me especially in a silk dress, trimmed with old lace;
+and I remembered something she said one day when she was wearing this
+dress. She said: 'Robert, my child, if you do not stand up straight you
+will be round-shouldered all your life.'
+
+“Then, opening another drawer, I found myself face to face with memories
+of tender passions: a dancing-pump, a torn handkerchief, even a garter,
+locks of hair and dried flowers. Then the sweet romances of my life,
+whose living heroines are now white-haired, plunged me into the deep
+melancholy of things. Oh, the young brows where blond locks curl, the
+caress of the hands, the glance which speaks, the hearts which beat,
+that smile which promises the lips, those lips which promise the
+embrace! And the first kiss-that endless kiss which makes you close your
+eyes, which drowns all thought in the immeasurable joy of approaching
+possession!
+
+“Taking these old pledges of former love in both my hands, I covered
+them with furious caresses, and in my soul, torn by these memories, I
+saw them each again at the hour of surrender; and I suffered a torture
+more cruel than all the tortures invented in all the fables about hell.
+
+“One last letter remained. It was written by me and dictated fifty years
+ago by my writing teacher. Here it is:
+
+   “'MY DEAR LITTLE MAMMA:
+
+   “'I am seven years old to-day. It is the age of reason. I take
+   advantage of it to thank you for having brought me into this world.
+
+   “'Your little son, who loves you
+
+                    “'ROBERT.'
+
+“It is all over. I had gone back to the beginning, and suddenly I turned
+my glance on what remained to me of life. I saw hideous and lonely old
+age, and approaching infirmities, and everything over and gone. And
+nobody near me!
+
+“My revolver is here, on the table. I am loading it.... Never reread
+your old letters!”
+
+And that is how many men come to kill themselves; and we search in vain
+to discover some great sorrow in their lives.
+
+
+
+
+AN ARTIFICE
+
+The old doctor sat by the fireside, talking to his fair patient who was
+lying on the lounge. There was nothing much the matter with her, except
+that she had one of those little feminine ailments from which pretty
+women frequently suffer--slight anaemia, a nervous attack, etc.
+
+“No, doctor,” she said; “I shall never be able to understand a woman
+deceiving her husband. Even allowing that she does not love him, that
+she pays no heed to her vows and promises, how can she give herself to
+another man? How can she conceal the intrigue from other people's eyes?
+How can it be possible to love amid lies and treason?”
+
+The doctor smiled, and replied: “It is perfectly easy, and I can assure
+you that a woman does not think of all those little subtle details when
+she has made up her mind to go astray.
+
+“As for dissimulation, all women have plenty of it on hand for such
+occasions, and the simplest of them are wonderful, and extricate
+themselves from the greatest dilemmas in a remarkable manner.”
+
+The young woman, however, seemed incredulous.
+
+“No, doctor,” she said; “one never thinks until after it has happened
+of what one ought to have done in a critical situation, and women are
+certainly more liable than men to lose their head on such occasions:”
+
+The doctor raised his hands. “After it has happened, you say! Now I will
+tell you something that happened to one of my female patients, whom I
+always considered an immaculate woman.
+
+“It happened in a provincial town, and one night when I was asleep,
+in that deep first sleep from which it is so difficult to rouse us, it
+seemed to me, in my dreams, as if the bells in the town were sounding
+a fire alarm, and I woke up with a start. It was my own bell, which was
+ringing wildly, and as my footman did not seem to be answering the door,
+I, in turn, pulled the bell at the head of my bed, and soon I heard a
+banging, and steps in the silent house, and Jean came into my room, and
+handed me a letter which said: 'Madame Lelievre begs Dr. Simeon to come
+to her immediately.'
+
+“I thought for a few moments, and then I said to myself: 'A nervous
+attack, vapors; nonsense, I am too tired.' And so I replied: 'As Dr.
+Simeon is not at all well, he must beg Madame Lelievre to be kind enough
+to call in his colleague, Monsieur Bonnet.' I put the note into an
+envelope and went to sleep again, but about half an hour later the
+street bell rang again, and Jean came to me and said: 'There is somebody
+downstairs; I do not quite know whether it is a man or a woman, as the
+individual is so wrapped up, but they wish to speak to you immediately.
+They say it is a matter of life and death for two people.' Whereupon I
+sat up in bed and told him to show the person in.
+
+“A kind of black phantom appeared and raised her veil as soon as Jean
+had left the room. It was Madame Berthe Lelievre, quite a young woman,
+who had been married for three years to a large a merchant in the town,
+who was said to have married the prettiest girl in the neighborhood.
+
+“She was terribly pale, her face was contracted as the faces of insane
+people are, occasionally, and her hands trembled violently. Twice she
+tried to speak without being able to utter a sound, but at last she
+stammered out: 'Come--quick--quick, doctor. Come--my--friend has just
+died in my bedroom.' She stopped, half suffocated with emotion, and then
+went on: 'My husband will be coming home from the club very soon.'
+
+“I jumped out of bed without even considering that I was only in my
+nightshirt, and dressed myself in a few moments, and then I said: 'Did
+you come a short time ago?' 'No,' she said, standing like a statue
+petrified with horror. 'It was my servant--she knows.' And then, after a
+short silence, she went on: 'I was there--by his side.' And she uttered
+a sort of cry of horror, and after a fit of choking, which made her
+gasp, she wept violently, and shook with spasmodic sobs for a minute: or
+two. Then her tears suddenly ceased, as if by an internal fire, and with
+an air of tragic calmness, she said: 'Let us make haste.'
+
+“I was ready, but exclaimed: 'I quite forgot to order my carriage.' 'I
+have one,' she said; 'it is his, which was waiting for him!' She wrapped
+herself up, so as to completely conceal her face, and we started.
+
+“When she was by my side in the carriage she suddenly seized my hand,
+and crushing it in her delicate fingers, she said, with a shaking voice,
+that proceeded from a distracted heart: 'Oh! if you only knew, if
+you only knew what I am suffering! I loved him, I have loved him
+distractedly, like a madwoman, for the last six months.' 'Is anyone
+up in your house?' I asked. 'No, nobody except those, who knows
+everything.'
+
+“We stopped at the door, and evidently everybody was asleep. We went in
+without making any noise, by means of her latch-key, and walked upstairs
+on tiptoe. The frightened servant was sitting on the top of the stairs
+with a lighted candle by her side, as she was afraid to remain with the
+dead man, and I went into the room, which was in great disorder. Wet
+towels, with which they had bathed the young man's temples, were lying
+on the floor, by the side of a washbasin and a glass, while a strong
+smell of vinegar pervaded the room.
+
+“The dead man's body was lying at full length in the middle of the room,
+and I went up to it, looked at it, and touched it. I opened the eyes and
+felt the hands, and then, turning to the two women, who were shaking as
+if they were freezing, I said to them: 'Help me to lift him on to the
+bed.' When we had laid him gently on it, I listened to his heart and put
+a looking-glass to his lips, and then said: 'It is all over.' It was a
+terrible sight!
+
+“I looked at the man, and said: 'You ought to arrange his hair a
+little.' The girl went and brought her mistress' comb and brush, but as
+she was trembling, and pulling out his long, matted hair in doing it,
+Madame Lelievre took the comb out of her hand, and arranged his hair as
+if she were caressing him. She parted it, brushed his beard, rolled his
+mustaches gently round her fingers, then, suddenly, letting go of his
+hair, she took the dead man's inert head in her hands and looked for a
+long time in despair at the dead face, which no longer could smile at
+her, and then, throwing herself on him, she clasped him in her arms and
+kissed him ardently. Her kisses fell like blows on his closed mouth and
+eyes, his forehead and temples; and then, putting her lips to his ear,
+as if he could still hear her, and as if she were about to whisper
+something to him, she said several times, in a heartrending voice:
+
+“'Good-by, my darling!'
+
+“Just then the clock struck twelve, and I started up. 'Twelve o'clock!'
+I exclaimed. 'That is the time when the club closes. Come, madame, we
+have not a moment to lose!' She started up, and I said:
+
+“'We must carry him into the drawing-room.' And when we had done this,
+I placed him on a sofa, and lit the chandeliers, and just then the front
+door was opened and shut noisily. 'Rose, bring me the basin and the
+towels, and make the room look tidy. Make haste, for Heaven's sake!
+Monsieur Lelievre is coming in.'
+
+“I heard his steps on the stairs, and then his hands feeling along the
+walls. 'Come here, my dear fellow,' I said; 'we have had an accident.'
+
+“And the astonished husband appeared in the door with a cigar in his
+mouth, and said: 'What is the matter? What is the meaning of this?'
+'My dear friend,' I said, going up to him, 'you find us in great
+embarrassment. I had remained late, chatting with your wife and our
+friend, who had brought me in his carriage, when he suddenly fainted,
+and in spite of all we have done, he has remained unconscious for two
+hours. I did not like to call in strangers, and if you will now help me
+downstairs with him, I shall be able to attend to him better at his own
+house.'
+
+“The husband, who was surprised, but quite unsuspicious, took off his
+hat, and then he took his rival, who would be quite inoffensive for the
+future, under the arms. I got between his two legs, as if I had been a
+horse between the shafts, and we went downstairs, while his wife held a
+light for us. When we got outside I stood the body up, so as to deceive
+the coachman, and said: 'Come, my friend; it is nothing; you feel better
+already I expect. Pluck up your courage, and make an effort. It will
+soon be over.' But as I felt that he was slipping out of my hands, I
+gave him a slap on the shoulder, which sent him forward and made him
+fall into the carriage, and then I got in after him. Monsieur Lelievre,
+who was rather alarmed, said to me: 'Do you think it is anything
+serious?' To which I replied: 'No,' with a smile, as I looked at his
+wife, who had put her arm into that of her husband, and was trying to
+see into the carriage.
+
+“I shook hands with them and told my coachman to start, and during the
+whole drive the dead man kept falling against me. When we got to his
+house I said that he had become unconscious on the way home, and helped
+to carry him upstairs, where I certified that he was dead, and acted
+another comedy to his distracted family, and at last I got back to bed,
+not without swearing at lovers.”
+
+The doctor ceased, though he was still smiling, and the young woman, who
+was in a very nervous state, said: “Why have you told me that terrible
+story?”
+
+He gave her a gallant bow, and replied:
+
+“So that I may offer you my services if they should be needed.”
+
+
+
+
+DREAMS
+
+They had just dined together, five old friends, a writer, a doctor and
+three rich bachelors without any profession.
+
+They had talked about everything, and a feeling of lassitude came over
+them, that feeling which precedes and leads to the departure of guests
+after festive gatherings. One of those present, who had for the last
+five minutes been gazing silently at the surging boulevard dotted with
+gas-lamps, with its rattling vehicles, said suddenly:
+
+“When you've nothing to do from morning till night, the days are long.”
+
+“And the nights too,” assented the guest who sat next to him. “I sleep
+very little; pleasures fatigue me; conversation is monotonous. Never
+do I come across a new idea, and I feel, before talking to any one, a
+violent longing to say nothing and to listen to nothing. I don't know
+what to do with my evenings.”
+
+The third idler remarked:
+
+“I would pay a great deal for anything that would help me to pass just
+two pleasant hours every day.”
+
+The writer, who had just thrown his overcoat across his arm, turned
+round to them, and said:
+
+“The man who could discover a new vice and introduce it among his
+fellow creatures, even if it were to shorten their lives, would render a
+greater service to humanity than the man who found the means of securing
+to them eternal salvation and eternal youth.”
+
+The doctor burst out laughing, and, while he chewed his cigar, he said:
+
+“Yes, but it is not so easy to discover it. Men have however crudely,
+been seeking for--and working for the object you refer to since the
+beginning of the world. The men who came first reached perfection at
+once in this way. We are hardly equal to them.”
+
+One of the three idlers murmured:
+
+“What a pity!”
+
+Then, after a minute's pause, he added:
+
+“If we could only sleep, sleep well, without feeling hot or cold, sleep
+with that perfect unconsciousness we experience on nights when we are
+thoroughly fatigued, sleep without dreams.”
+
+“Why without dreams?” asked the guest sitting next to him.
+
+The other replied:
+
+“Because dreams are not always pleasant; they are always fantastic,
+improbable, disconnected; and because when we are asleep we cannot have
+the sort of dreams we like. We ought to dream waking.”
+
+“And what's to prevent you?” asked the writer.
+
+The doctor flung away the end of his cigar.
+
+“My dear fellow, in order to dream when you are awake, you need great
+power and great exercise of will, and when you try to do it, great
+weariness is the result. Now, real dreaming, that journey of our
+thoughts through delightful visions, is assuredly the sweetest
+experience in the world; but it must come naturally, it must not be
+provoked in a painful, manner, and must be accompanied by absolute
+bodily comfort. This power of dreaming I can give you, provided you
+promise that you will not abuse it.”
+
+The writer shrugged his shoulders:
+
+“Ah! yes, I know--hasheesh, opium, green tea--artificial paradises. I
+have read Baudelaire, and I even tasted the famous drug, which made me
+very sick.”
+
+But the doctor, without stirring from his seat, said:
+
+“No; ether, nothing but ether; and I would suggest that you literary men
+should use it sometimes.”
+
+The three rich bachelors drew closer to the doctor.
+
+One of them said:
+
+“Explain to us the effects of it.”
+
+And the doctor replied:
+
+“Let us put aside big words, shall we not? I am not talking of medicine
+or morality; I am talking of pleasure. You give yourselves up every day
+to excesses which consume your lives. I want to indicate to you a
+new sensation, possible only to intelligent men--let us say even very
+intelligent men--dangerous, like everything else that overexcites our
+organs, but exquisite. I might add that you would require a certain
+preparation, that is to say, practice, to feel in all their completeness
+the singular effects of ether.
+
+“They are different from the effects of hasheesh, of opium, or morphia,
+and they cease as soon as the absorption of the drug is interrupted,
+while the other generators of day dreams continue their action for
+hours.
+
+“I am now going to try to analyze these feelings as clearly as
+possible. But the thing is not easy, so facile, so delicate, so almost
+imperceptible, are these sensations.
+
+“It was when I was attacked by violent neuralgia that I made use of this
+remedy, which since then I have, perhaps, slightly abused.
+
+“I had acute pains in my head and neck, and an intolerable heat of the
+skin, a feverish restlessness. I took up a large bottle of ether, and,
+lying down, I began to inhale it slowly.
+
+“At the end of some minutes I thought I heard a vague murmur, which ere
+long became a sort of humming, and it seemed to me that all the interior
+of my body had become light, light as air, that it was dissolving into
+vapor.
+
+“Then came a sort of torpor, a sleepy sensation of comfort, in spite of
+the pains which still continued, but which had ceased to make themselves
+felt. It was one of those sensations which we are willing to endure
+and not any of those frightful wrenches against which our tortured body
+protests.
+
+“Soon the strange and delightful sense of emptiness which I felt in my
+chest extended to my limbs, which, in their turn, became light, as light
+as if the flesh and the bones had been melted and the skin only were
+left, the skin necessary to enable me to realize the sweetness of
+living, of bathing in this sensation of well-being. Then I perceived
+that I was no longer suffering. The pain had gone, melted away,
+evaporated. And I heard voices, four voices, two dialogues, without
+understanding what was said. At one time there were only indistinct
+sounds, at another time a word reached my ear. But I recognized that
+this was only the humming I had heard before, but emphasized. I was not
+asleep; I was not awake; I comprehended, I felt, I reasoned with the
+utmost clearness and depth, with extraordinary energy and intellectual
+pleasure, with a singular intoxication arising from this separation of
+my mental faculties.
+
+“It was not like the dreams caused by hasheesh or the somewhat sickly
+visions that come from opium; it was an amazing acuteness of reasoning,
+a new way of seeing, judging and appreciating the things of life, and
+with the certainty, the absolute consciousness that this was the true
+way.
+
+“And the old image of the Scriptures suddenly came back to my mind. It
+seemed to me that I had tasted of the Tree of Knowledge, that all the
+mysteries were unveiled, so much did I find myself under the sway of a
+new, strange and irrefutable logic. And arguments, reasonings, proofs
+rose up in a heap before my brain only to be immediately displaced by
+some stronger proof, reasoning, argument. My head had, in fact, become
+a battleground of ideas. I was a superior being, armed with invincible
+intelligence, and I experienced a huge delight at the manifestation of
+my power.
+
+“It lasted a long, long time. I still kept inhaling the ether from my
+flagon. Suddenly I perceived that it was empty.”
+
+The four men exclaimed at the same time:
+
+“Doctor, a prescription at once for a liter of ether!”
+
+But the doctor, putting on his hat, replied:
+
+“As to that, certainly not; go and let some one else poison you!”
+
+And he left them.
+
+Ladies and gentlemen, what is your opinion on the subject?
+
+
+
+
+SIMON'S PAPA
+
+Noon had just struck. The school door opened and the youngsters darted
+out, jostling each other in their haste to get out quickly. But instead
+of promptly dispersing and going home to dinner as usual, they stopped a
+few paces off, broke up into knots, and began whispering.
+
+The fact was that, that morning, Simon, the son of La Blanchotte, had,
+for the first time, attended school.
+
+They had all of them in their families heard talk of La Blanchotte; and,
+although in public she was welcome enough, the mothers among themselves
+treated her with a somewhat disdainful compassion, which the children
+had imitated without in the least knowing why.
+
+As for Simon himself, they did not know him, for he never went out, and
+did not run about with them in the streets of the village, or along
+the banks of the river. And they did not care for him; so it was with a
+certain delight, mingled with considerable astonishment, that they met
+and repeated to each other what had been said by a lad of fourteen or
+fifteen who appeared to know all about it, so sagaciously did he wink.
+“You know--Simon--well, he has no papa.”
+
+Just then La Blanchotte's son appeared in the doorway of the school.
+
+He was seven or eight years old, rather pale, very neat, with a timid
+and almost awkward manner.
+
+He was starting home to his mother's house when the groups of his
+schoolmates, whispering and watching him with the mischievous and
+heartless eyes of children bent upon playing a nasty trick, gradually
+closed in around him and ended by surrounding him altogether. There he
+stood in their midst, surprised and embarrassed, not understanding what
+they were going to do with him. But the lad who had brought the news,
+puffed up with the success he had met with already, demanded:
+
+“What is your name, you?”
+
+He answered: “Simon.”
+
+“Simon what?” retorted the other.
+
+The child, altogether bewildered, repeated: “Simon.”
+
+The lad shouted at him: “One is named Simon something--that is not a
+name--Simon indeed.”
+
+The child, on the brink of tears, replied for the third time:
+
+“My name is Simon.”
+
+The urchins began to laugh. The triumphant tormentor cried: “You can see
+plainly that he has no papa.”
+
+A deep silence ensued. The children were dumfounded by this
+extraordinary, impossible, monstrous thing--a boy who had not a papa;
+they looked upon him as a phenomenon, an unnatural being, and they felt
+that hitherto inexplicable contempt of their mothers for La Blanchotte
+growing upon them. As for Simon, he had leaned against a tree to avoid
+falling, and he remained as if prostrated by an irreparable disaster.
+He sought to explain, but could think of nothing-to say to refute this
+horrible charge that he had no papa. At last he shouted at them quite
+recklessly: “Yes, I have one.”
+
+“Where is he?” demanded the boy.
+
+Simon was silent, he did not know. The children roared, tremendously
+excited; and those country boys, little more than animals, experienced
+that cruel craving which prompts the fowls of a farmyard to destroy one
+of their number as soon as it is wounded. Simon suddenly espied a little
+neighbor, the son of a widow, whom he had seen, as he himself was to be
+seen, always alone with his mother.
+
+“And no more have you,” he said; “no more have you a papa.”
+
+“Yes,” replied the other, “I have one.”
+
+“Where is he?” rejoined Simon.
+
+“He is dead,” declared the brat, with superb dignity; “he is in the
+cemetery, is my papa.”
+
+A murmur of approval rose among the little wretches as if this fact of
+possessing a papa dead in a cemetery had caused their comrade to grow
+big enough to crush the other one who had no papa at all. And these
+boys, whose fathers were for the most part bad men, drunkards, thieves,
+and who beat their wives, jostled each other to press closer and closer,
+as though they, the legitimate ones, would smother by their pressure one
+who was illegitimate.
+
+The boy who chanced to be next Simon suddenly put his tongue out at him
+with a mocking air and shouted at him:
+
+“No papa! No papa!”
+
+Simon seized him by the hair with both hands and set to work to disable
+his legs with kicks, while he bit his cheek ferociously. A tremendous
+struggle ensued between the two combatants, and Simon found himself
+beaten, torn, bruised, rolled on the ground in the midst of the ring of
+applauding schoolboys. As he arose, mechanically brushing with his hand
+his little blouse all covered with dust, some one shouted at him:
+
+“Go and tell your papa.”
+
+Then he felt a great sinking at his heart. They were stronger than he
+was, they had beaten him, and he had no answer to give them, for he knew
+well that it was true that he had no papa. Full of pride, he attempted
+for some moments to struggle against the tears which were choking him.
+He had a feeling of suffocation, and then without any sound he commenced
+to weep, with great shaking sobs. A ferocious joy broke out among
+his enemies, and, with one accord, just like savages in their fearful
+festivals, they took each other by the hand and danced round him in a
+circle, repeating as a refrain:
+
+“No papa! No papa!”
+
+But suddenly Simon ceased sobbing. He became ferocious. There were
+stones under his feet; he picked them up and with all his strength
+hurled them at his tormentors. Two or three were struck and rushed
+off yelling, and so formidable did he appear that the rest became
+panic-stricken. Cowards, as the mob always is in presence of an
+exasperated man, they broke up and fled. Left alone, the little fellow
+without a father set off running toward the fields, for a recollection
+had been awakened in him which determined his soul to a great resolve.
+He made up his mind to drown himself in the river.
+
+He remembered, in fact, that eight days before, a poor devil who begged
+for his livelihood had thrown himself into the water because he had no
+more money. Simon had been there when they fished him out again; and the
+wretched man, who usually seemed to him so miserable, and ugly, had then
+struck him as being so peaceful with his pale cheeks, his long drenched
+beard, and his open eyes full of calm. The bystanders had said:
+
+“He is dead.”
+
+And some one had said:
+
+“He is quite happy now.”
+
+And Simon wished to drown himself also, because he had no father, just
+like the wretched being who had no money.
+
+He reached the water and watched it flowing. Some fish were sporting
+briskly in the clear stream and occasionally made a little bound and
+caught the flies flying on the surface. He stopped crying in order
+to watch them, for their maneuvers interested him greatly. But, at
+intervals, as in a tempest intervals of calm alternate suddenly with
+tremendous gusts of wind, which snap off the trees and then lose
+themselves in the horizon, this thought would return to him with intense
+pain:
+
+“I am going to drown myself because I have no papa.”
+
+It was very warm, fine weather. The pleasant sunshine warmed the
+grass. The water shone like a mirror. And Simon enjoyed some minutes of
+happiness, of that languor which follows weeping, and felt inclined to
+fall asleep there upon the grass in the warm sunshine.
+
+A little green frog leaped from under his feet. He endeavored to
+catch it. It escaped him. He followed it and lost it three times in
+succession. At last he caught it by one of its hind legs and began to
+laugh as he saw the efforts the creature made to escape. It gathered
+itself up on its hind legs and then with a violent spring suddenly
+stretched them out as stiff as two bars; while it beat the air with its
+front legs as though they were hands, its round eyes staring in their
+circle of yellow. It reminded him of a toy made of straight slips
+of wood nailed zigzag one on the other; which by a similar movement
+regulated the movements of the little soldiers fastened thereon. Then he
+thought of his home, and then of his mother, and, overcome by sorrow,
+he again began to weep. A shiver passed over him. He knelt down and said
+his prayers as before going to bed. But he was unable to finish them,
+for tumultuous, violent sobs shook his whole frame. He no longer
+thought, he no longer saw anything around him, and was wholly absorbed
+in crying.
+
+Suddenly a heavy hand was placed upon his shoulder, and a rough voice
+asked him:
+
+“What is it that causes you so much grief, my little man?”
+
+Simon turned round. A tall workman with a beard and black curly hair was
+staring at him good-naturedly. He answered with his eyes and throat full
+of tears:
+
+“They beat me--because--I--I have no--papa--no papa.”
+
+“What!” said the man, smiling; “why, everybody has one.”
+
+The child answered painfully amid his spasms of grief:
+
+“But I--I--I have none.”
+
+Then the workman became serious. He had recognized La Blanchotte's son,
+and, although himself a new arrival in the neighborhood, he had a vague
+idea of her history.
+
+“Well,” said he, “console yourself, my boy, and come with me home to
+your mother. They will give you--a papa.”
+
+And so they started on the way, the big fellow holding the little
+fellow by the hand, and the man smiled, for he was not sorry to see
+this Blanchotte, who was, it was said, one of the prettiest girls of the
+countryside, and, perhaps, he was saying to himself, at the bottom of
+his heart, that a lass who had erred might very well err again.
+
+They arrived in front of a very neat little white house.
+
+“There it is,” exclaimed the child, and he cried, “Mamma!”
+
+A woman appeared, and the workman instantly left off smiling, for he saw
+at once that there was no fooling to be done with the tall pale girl
+who stood austerely at her door as though to defend from one man the
+threshold of that house where she had already been betrayed by another.
+Intimidated, his cap in his hand, he stammered out:
+
+“See, madame, I have brought you back your little boy who had lost
+himself near the river.”
+
+But Simon flung his arms about his mother's neck and told her, as he
+again began to cry:
+
+“No, mamma, I wished to drown myself, because the others had beaten me
+--had beaten me--because I have no papa.”
+
+A burning redness covered the young woman's cheeks; and, hurt to the
+quick, she embraced her child passionately, while the tears coursed down
+her face. The man, much moved, stood there, not knowing how to get away.
+
+But Simon suddenly ran to him and said:
+
+“Will you be my papa?”
+
+A deep silence ensued. La Blanchotte, dumb and tortured with shame,
+leaned herself against the wall, both her hands upon her heart. The
+child, seeing that no answer was made him, replied:
+
+“If you will not, I shall go back and drown myself.”
+
+The workman took the matter as a jest and answered, laughing:
+
+“Why, yes, certainly I will.”
+
+“What is your name,” went on the child, “so that I may tell the others
+when they wish to know your name?”
+
+“Philip,” answered the man:
+
+Simon was silent a moment so that he might get the name well into his
+head; then he stretched out his arms, quite consoled, as he said:
+
+“Well, then, Philip, you are my papa.”
+
+The workman, lifting him from the ground, kissed him hastily on both
+cheeks, and then walked away very quickly with great strides. When the
+child returned to school next day he was received with a spiteful
+laugh, and at the end of school, when the lads were on the point of
+recommencing, Simon threw these words at their heads as he would have
+done a stone: “He is named Philip, my papa.”
+
+Yells of delight burst out from all sides.
+
+“Philip who? Philip what? What on earth is Philip? Where did you pick up
+your Philip?”
+
+Simon answered nothing; and, immovable in his faith, he defied them with
+his eye, ready to be martyred rather than fly before them. The school
+master came to his rescue and he returned home to his mother.
+
+During three months, the tall workman, Philip, frequently passed by La
+Blanchotte's house, and sometimes he made bold to speak to her when
+he saw her sewing near the window. She answered him civilly, always
+sedately, never joking with him, nor permitting him to enter her house.
+Notwithstanding, being, like all men, a bit of a coxcomb, he imagined
+that she was often rosier than usual when she chatted with him.
+
+But a lost reputation is so difficult to regain and always remains so
+fragile that, in spite of the shy reserve of La Blanchotte, they already
+gossiped in the neighborhood.
+
+As for Simon he loved his new papa very much, and walked with him nearly
+every evening when the day's work was done. He went regularly to
+school, and mixed with great dignity with his schoolfellows without ever
+answering them back.
+
+One day, however, the lad who had first attacked him said to him:
+
+“You have lied. You have not a papa named Philip.”
+
+“Why do you say that?” demanded Simon, much disturbed.
+
+The youth rubbed his hands. He replied:
+
+“Because if you had one he would be your mamma's husband.”
+
+Simon was confused by the truth of this reasoning; nevertheless, he
+retorted:
+
+“He is my papa, all the same.”
+
+“That can very well be,” exclaimed the urchin with a sneer, “but that is
+not being your papa altogether.”
+
+La Blanchotte's little one bowed his head and went off dreaming in the
+direction of the forge belonging to old Loizon, where Philip worked.
+This forge was as though buried beneath trees. It was very dark there;
+the red glare of a formidable furnace alone lit up with great flashes
+five blacksmiths; who hammered upon their anvils with a terrible din.
+They were standing enveloped in flame, like demons, their eyes fixed on
+the red-hot iron they were pounding; and their dull ideas rose and fell
+with their hammers.
+
+Simon entered without being noticed, and went quietly to pluck his
+friend by the sleeve. The latter turned round. All at once the work came
+to a standstill, and all the men looked on, very attentive. Then, in the
+midst of this unaccustomed silence, rose the slender pipe of Simon:
+
+“Say, Philip, the Michaude boy told me just now that you were not
+altogether my papa.”
+
+“Why not?” asked the blacksmith.
+
+The child replied with all innocence:
+
+“Because you are not my mamma's husband.”
+
+No one laughed. Philip remained standing, leaning his forehead upon
+the back of his great hands, which supported the handle of his hammer
+standing upright upon the anvil. He mused. His four companions watched
+him, and Simon, a tiny mite among these giants, anxiously waited.
+Suddenly, one of the smiths, answering to the sentiment of all, said to
+Philip:
+
+“La Blanchotte is a good, honest girl, and upright and steady in spite
+of her misfortune, and would make a worthy wife for an honest man.”
+
+“That is true,” remarked the three others.
+
+The smith continued:
+
+“Is it the girl's fault if she went wrong? She had been promised
+marriage; and I know more than one who is much respected to-day, and who
+sinned every bit as much.”
+
+“That is true,” responded the three men in chorus.
+
+He resumed:
+
+“How hard she has toiled, poor thing, to bring up her child all alone,
+and how she has wept all these years she has never gone out except to
+church, God only knows.”
+
+“This is also true,” said the others.
+
+Then nothing was heard but the bellows which fanned the fire of the
+furnace. Philip hastily bent himself down to Simon:
+
+“Go and tell your mother that I am coming to speak to her this evening.”
+ Then he pushed the child out by the shoulders. He returned to his work,
+and with a single blow the five hammers again fell upon their anvils.
+Thus they wrought the iron until nightfall, strong, powerful, happy,
+like contented hammers. But just as the great bell of a cathedral
+resounds upon feast days above the jingling of the other bells, so
+Philip's hammer, sounding above the rest, clanged second after second
+with a deafening uproar. And he stood amid the flying sparks plying his
+trade vigorously.
+
+The sky was full of stars as he knocked at La Blanchotte's door. He
+had on his Sunday blouse, a clean shirt, and his beard was trimmed. The
+young woman showed herself upon the threshold, and said in a grieved
+tone:
+
+“It is ill to come thus when night has fallen, Mr. Philip.”
+
+He wished to answer, but stammered and stood confused before her.
+
+She resumed:
+
+“You understand, do you not, that it will not do for me to be talked
+about again.”
+
+“What does that matter to me, if you will be my wife!”
+
+No voice replied to him, but he believed that he heard in the shadow of
+the room the sound of a falling body. He entered quickly; and Simon, who
+had gone to bed, distinguished the sound of a kiss and some words that
+his mother murmured softly. Then, all at once, he found himself lifted
+up by the hands of his friend, who, holding him at the length of his
+herculean arms, exclaimed:
+
+“You will tell them, your schoolmates, that your papa is Philip Remy,
+the blacksmith, and that he will pull the ears of all who do you any
+harm.”
+
+On the morrow, when the school was full and lessons were about to begin,
+little Simon stood up, quite pale with trembling lips:
+
+“My papa,” said he in a clear voice, “is Philip Remy, the blacksmith,
+and he has promised to pull the ears of all who does me any harm.”
+
+This time no one laughed, for he was very well known, was Philip Remy,
+the blacksmith, and was a papa of whom any one in the world would have
+been proud.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Original Short Stories of Maupassant,
+Volume 11, by Guy de Maupassant
+
+*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MAUPASSANT SHORT STORIES ***
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