Then he got up, lit the candle, and began to walk
up and down, with his arms behind him. She was
cowering on the bed and crying, and suddenly he stopped
in front of her, and said: “Then it is my
fault that you have no children?” She gave him
no answer, and he began to walk up and down again,
and then, stopping again, he continued: “How
old is your child?” “Just six,”
she whispered. “Why did you not tell me
about it?” he asked. “How could I?”
she replied, with a sigh.
He remained standing, motionless. “Come,
get up,” he said. She got up with some
difficulty, and then, when she was standing on the
floor, he suddenly began to laugh with the hearty
laugh of his good days, and, seeing how surprised
she was, he added: “Very well, we will go
and fetch the child, as you and I can have none together.”
She was so scared that if she had had the strength
she would assuredly have run away, but the farmer
rubbed his hands and said: “I wanted to
adopt one, and now we have found one. I asked
the cure about an orphan some time ago.”
Then, still laughing, he kissed his weeping and agitated
wife on both cheeks, and shouted out, as though she
could not hear him: “Come along, mother,
we will go and see whether there is any soup left;
I should not mind a plateful.”
She put on her petticoat and they went downstairs;
and While she was kneeling in front of the fireplace
and lighting the fire under the saucepan, he continued
to walk up and down the kitchen with long strides,
repeating:
“Well, I am really glad of this; I am not saying
it for form’s sake, but I am glad, I am really
very glad.”
It was yesterday, the 31st of December.
I had just finished breakfast with my old friend Georges
Garin when the servant handed him a letter covered
with seals and foreign stamps.
Georges said:
“Will you excuse me?”
“Certainly.”
And so he began to read the letter, which was written
in a large English handwriting, crossed and recrossed
in every direction. He read them slowly, with
serious attention and the interest which we only pay
to things which touch our hearts.
Then he put the letter on the mantelpiece and said:
“That was a curious story! I’ve never
told you about it, I think. Yet it was a sentimental
adventure, and it really happened to me. That
was a strange New Year’s Day, indeed! It
must have been twenty years ago, for I was then thirty
and am now fifty years old.
“I was then an inspector in the Maritime Insurance
Company, of which I am now director. I had arranged
to pass New Year’s Day in Paris—since
it is customary to make that day a fete—when
I received a letter from the manager, asking me to
proceed at once to the island of Re, where a three-masted
vessel from Saint-Nazaire, insured by us, had just
been driven ashore. It was then eight o’clock
in the morning. I arrived at the office at ten
to get my advices, and that evening I took the express,
which put me down in La Rochelle the next day, the
31st of December.
