“Again I was obliged to go away.  And I was alone.  Yes, monsieur.

“Then he went to England, to live with them, with his wife’s parents.  Do you understand?  They have him—­they have my son for themselves.  They have stolen him from me.  He writes to me once a month.  At first he came to see me.  But now he no longer comes.

“It is now four years since I saw him last.  His face then was wrinkled and his hair white.  Was that possible?  This man, my son, almost an old man?  My little rosy child of old?  No doubt I shall never see him again.

“And so I travel about all the year.  I go east and west, as you see, with no companion.

“I am like a lost dog.  Adieu, monsieur! don’t stay here with me for it hurts me to have told you all this.”

I went down the hill, and on turning round to glance back, I saw the old woman standing on a broken wall, looking out upon the mountains, the long valley and Lake Chambon in the distance.

And her skirt and the queer little shawl which she wore around her thin shoulders were fluttering tike a flag in the wind.

MADEMOISELLE COCOTTE

We were just leaving the asylum when I saw a tall, thin man in a corner of the court who kept on calling an imaginary dog.  He was crying in a soft, tender voice:  “Cocotte!  Come here, Cocotte, my beauty!” and slapping his thigh as one does when calling an animal.  I asked the physician, “Who is that man?” He answered:  “Oh! he is not at all interesting.  He is a coachman named Francois, who became insane after drowning his dog.”

I insisted:  “Tell me his story.  The most simple and humble things are sometimes those which touch our hearts most deeply.”

Here is this man’s adventure, which was obtained from a friend of his, a groom: 

There was a family of rich bourgeois who lived in a suburb of Paris.  They had a villa in the middle of a park, at the edge of the Seine.  Their coachman was this Francois, a country fellow, somewhat dull, kind-hearted, simple and easy to deceive.

One evening, as he was returning home, a dog began to follow him.  At first he paid no attention to it, but the creature’s obstinacy at last made him turn round.  He looked to see if he knew this dog.  No, he had never seen it.  It was a female dog and frightfully thin.  She was trotting behind him with a mournful and famished look, her tail between her legs, her ears flattened against her head and stopping and starting whenever he did.

He tried to chase this skeleton away and cried: 

“Run along!  Get out!  Kss! kss!” She retreated a few steps, then sat down and waited.  And when the coachman started to walk again she followed along behind him.

He pretended to pick up some stones.  The animal ran a little farther away, but came back again as soon as the man’s back was turned.

Then the coachman Francois took pity on the beast and called her.  The dog approached timidly.  The man patted her protruding ribs, moved by the beast’s misery, and he cried:  “Come! come here!” Immediately she began to wag her tail, and, feeling herself taken in, adopted, she began to run along ahead of her new master.