“I am about to drown myself because I have no Papa.”

It was very warm and fine weather.  The pleasant sunshine warmed the grass.  The water shone like a mirror.  And Simon enjoyed some minutes the happiness of that languor which follows weeping, in which he felt very desirous of falling asleep there upon the grass in the warmth.

A little green frog leapt from under his feet.  He endeavored to catch it.  It escaped him.  He followed it and lost it three times following.  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 large legs and then with a violent spring suddenly stretched them out as stiff as two bars; while, its eye wide open in its round, golden circle, it beat the air with its front limbs which worked as though they were hands.  It reminded him of a toy made with straight slips of wood nailed zigzag one on the other, which by a similar movement regulated the exercise of the little soldiers stuck thereon.  Then he thought of his home and next of his mother, and overcome by a great sorrow he again began to weep.  His limbs trembled; and he placed himself on his knees and said his prayers as before going to bed.  But he was unable to finish them, for such hurried and violent sobs overtook him that he was completely overwhelmed.  He thought no more, he no longer saw anything around him and was wholly taken up 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 fine fellow?”

Simon turned round.  A tall workman with a black beard and hair all curled, was staring at him good naturedly.  He answered with his eyes and throat full of tears: 

“They have beaten me ... because ...  I ... have no ...  Papa ... no Papa.”

“What!” said the man smiling, “why everybody has one.”

The child answered painfully amidst his spasms of grief: 

“But I ...  I ...  I have none.”

Then the workman became serious.  He had recognized La Blanchotte’s son, and although but recently come to 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 one holding the little one by the hand, and the man smiled afresh, for he was not sorry to see this Blanchotte, who was, it was said, one of the prettiest girls of the country-side, and, perhaps, he said 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 little and very neat white house.

“There it is,” exclaimed the child, and he cried “Mamma.”

A woman appeared and the workman instantly left off smiling, for he at once perceived that there was no more 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: