Half an hour afterwards, his mother, returning, caught the unfortunate fugitive contemplatively perched on the edge of the fountain-basin.  In such a frenzy of anger as only unreasonable people are subject to, she caught the child, shivering with terror, and thrust him into the water.  The gold-fish splashed and swirled, and the water streamed over the sides of the basin.  It was only an instant’s work; snatching up the forlorn fisher, she shook him unmercifully, and set him upon the floor, dripping and breathless.  I saw nothing of them until night.  His mother had then recovered her usual peevishness, weakness, and inefficiency; the ebullition of energy had entirely subsided.  I was curious to know whether the summary punishment had had any effect upon Jacques; but he was asleep, as soundly as usual after a day’s hard frolic.

My curiosity was likely to be gratified to satiety.  A strange change came over the little fellow after this.  To one accustomed to his apish activity, and to being annoyed by it, there was something plaintive in the fact of having got rid of that trouble.  The child was silent, mopish, “good,” as his mother said, congratulating herself on the effect of her summary visitation upon the offender.

When, however, a month passed without any return of the evil propensities, this continued quiescence grew to be something ghostly, and, to people who had only their own hands to depend on for a living, a subject of anxiety and alarm:  it was expensive to clothe and feed a child who promised but little service in future.

“The enfant will never come to anything,” said Monsieur; “we could better have spared him than Jean.”

To which his wife shook her head, and solemnly assented.

The ‘enfant,’ however, gave no signs of taking the hint.  Day after day his little ministerial head and flaxen curls were visible over the top of his old-fashioned arm-chair, and day after day his food was demanded, and his appetite was as good as ever.

Watching the child, whose blue eyes, now the mischief was out of them, grew utterly vacant of expression, I unaccountably to myself came to feel an uncomfortable interest in, a morbid sympathy with him,—­an uneasy, unhappy sympathy, more physical than mental.

No fault could have been found with the motherly carefulness and attention of Madame C——.  It was charmingly polite and French.  But the sight of her preparing the child’s food, or coaxing him with unaccustomed delicacies and bonbons, grew to be utterly distasteful,—­an infliction so nervously annoying that I could not overcome it.  A secret antipathy which I had nourished against Madame seemed to be germinating; every action of hers irritated me, every sound of her sharp, yet well-modulated voice gave me a tremor.  The truth was, that plunge into the water, taking place so unexpectedly in my presence, had startled and upset me almost as completely as if it had befallen myself.  A hard-working