He said again, mechanically, with increasing surprise:  “You have a child?  You have a child?”

“You took me by force, as I suppose you know?  I did not want to marry you,” she said, still sobbing.

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.”

THE WRECK

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.