And the old maid stretched out her trembling hand in a despairing gesture.  Then she blew her nose several times, wiped her eyes and continued: 

“I broke off my marriage—­without saying why.  And I—­I always have remained the—­the widow of this thirteen-year-old boy.”  Then her head fell on her breast and she wept for a long time.

As the guests were retiring for the night a large man, whose quiet she had disturbed, whispered in his neighbor’s ear:  “Isn’t it unfortunate to, be so sentimental?”

THE ENGLISHMAN OF ETRETAT

A great English poet has just crossed over to France in order to greet Victor Hugo.  All the newspapers are full of his name and he is the great topic of conversation in all drawing-rooms.  Fifteen years ago I had occasion several times to meet Algernon Charles Swinburne.  I will attempt to show him just as I saw him and to give an idea of the strange impression he made on me, which will remain with me throughout time.

I believe it was in 1867 or in 1868 that an unknown young Englishman came to Etretat and bought a little but hidden under great trees.  It was said that he lived there, always alone, in a strange manner; and he aroused the inimical surprise of the natives, for the inhabitants were sullen and foolishly malicious, as they always are in little towns.

They declared that this whimsical Englishman ate nothing but boiled. roasted or stewed monkey; that he would see no one; that he talked to himself hours at a time and many other surprising things that made people think that he was different from other men.  They were surprised that he should live alone with a monkey.  Had it been a cat or a dog they would have said nothing.  But a monkey!  Was that not frightful?  What savage tastes the man must have!

I knew this young man only from seeing him in the streets.  He was short, plump, without being fat, mild-looking, and he wore a little blond mustache, which was almost invisible.

Chance brought us together.  This savage had amiable and pleasing manners, but he was one of those strange Englishmen that one meets here and there throughout the world.

Endowed with remarkable intelligence, he seemed to live in a fantastic dream, as Edgar Poe must have lived.  He had translated into English a volume of strange Icelandic legends, which I ardently desired to see translated into French.  He loved the supernatural, the dismal and grewsome, but he spoke of the most marvellous things with a calmness that was typically English, to which his gentle and quiet voice gave a semblance of reality that was maddening.

Full of a haughty disdain for the world, with its conventions, prejudices and code of morality, he had nailed to his house a name that was boldly impudent.  The keeper of a lonely inn who should write on his door:  “Travellers murdered here!” could not make a more sinister jest.  I never had entered his dwelling, when one day I received an invitation to luncheon, following an accident that had occurred to one of his friends, who had been almost drowned and whom I had attempted to rescue.