“I had acted, without wishing it, without being
aware of it, in a worse fashion than these ignoble
beings. I had entered my own daughter’s
bed!
“I was on the point of throwing myself into
the water. I was mad! I wandered about till
dawn, then I came back to my own house to think.
“I thereupon did what appeared to me the wisest
thing. I desired a notary to send for this little
girl, and to ask her under what conditions her mother
had given her the portrait of him whom she supposed
to be her father, stating that he was intrusted with
this duty by a friend.
“The notary executed my commands. It was
on her death-bed that this woman had designated the
father of her daughter, and in the presence of a priest,
whose name was given to me.
“Then, still in the name of this unknown friend,
I got half of my fortune sent to this child, about
one hundred and forty thousand francs, of which she
could only get the income. Then I resigned my
employment—and here I am.
“While wandering along this shore, I found this
mountain, and I stopped there—up to what
time I am unable to say!
“What do you think of me, and of what I have
done?”
I replied as I extended my hand towards him:
“You have done what you ought to do. Many
others would have attached less importance to this
odious fatality.”
He went on:
“I know that, but I was nearly going mad on
account of it. It seems I had a sensitive soul
without ever suspecting it. And now I am afraid
of Paris, as believers are bound to be afraid of Hell.
I have received a blow on the head—that
is all—a blow resembling the fall of a tile
when one is passing through the street. I am
getting better for some time past.”
I quitted my solitary. I was much disturbed by
his narrative.
I saw him again twice, then I went away, for I never
remain in the South after the month of May.
When I came back in the following year the man was
no longer on Snake
Mountain; and I have never since heard anything about
him.
This is the history of my hermit.
The cemetery, filled with officers, looked like a
field covered with flowers. The kepis and the
red trousers, the stripes and the gold buttons, the
shoulder-knots of the staff, the braid of the chasseurs
and the hussars, passed through the midst of the tombs,
whose crosses, white or black, opened their mournful
arms—their arms of iron, marble, or wood—over
the vanished race of the dead.
Colonel Limousin’s wife had just been buried.
She had been drowned, two days before, while taking
a bath. It was over. The clergy had left;
but the colonel, supported by two brother-officers,
remained standing in front of the pit, at the bottom
of which he saw still the oaken coffin, wherein lay,
already decomposed, the body of his young wife.
