“As for me, my friend, it seemed as though the world was coming to an end, that the eternal laws had changed.  I experienced the overwhelming dread that one has in presence of things supernatural, in presence of irreparable disasters.  My childish mind was bewildered, distracted.  I began to cry with all my might, without knowing why; a prey to a fearful dread, sorrow, and astonishment.  My father heard me, turned round, and, on seeing me, started toward me.  I believe that he wanted to kill me, and I fled like a hunted animal, running straight ahead into the thicket.

“I ran perhaps for an hour, perhaps for two.  I know not.  Darkness set in.  I sank on the grass, exhausted, and lay there dismayed, frantic with fear, and devoured by a sorrow capable of breaking forever the heart of a poor child.  I was cold, hungry, perhaps.  At length day broke.  I was afraid to get up, to walk, to return home, to run farther, fearing to encounter my father, whom I did not wish to see again.

“I should probably have died of misery and of hunger at the foot of a tree if the park guard had not discovered me and led me home by force.

“I found my parents looking as usual.  My mother alone spoke to me “’How you frightened me, you naughty boy.  I lay awake the whole night.’

“I did not answer, but began to weep.  My father did not utter a single word.

“Eight days later I returned to school.

“Well, my friend, it was all over with me.  I had witnessed the other side of things, the bad side.  I have not been able to perceive the good side since that day.  What has taken place in my mind, what strange phenomenon has warped my ideas, I do not know.  But I no longer had a taste for anything, a wish for anything, a love for anybody, a desire for anything whatever, any ambition, or any hope.  And I always see my poor mother on the ground, in the park, my father beating her.  My mother died some years later; my, father still lives.  I have not seen him since.  Waiter, a ‘bock.’”

A waiter brought him his “bock,” which he swallowed at a gulp.  But, in taking up his pipe again, trembling as he was, he broke it.  “Confound it!” he said, with a gesture of annoyance.  “That is a real sorrow.  It will take me a month to color another!”

And he called out across the vast hall, now reeking with smoke and full of men drinking, his everlasting:  “Garcon, un ’bock’—­and a new pipe.”

AFTER

“My darlings,” said the comtesse, “you might go to bed.”

The three children, two girls and a boy, rose and kissed their grandmother.  Then they said good-night to M. le Cure, who had dined at the chateau, as was his custom every Thursday.

The Abbe Mauduit lifted two of the children on his knees, passing his long arms clad in black round their necks, and kissing them tenderly on the forehead as he drew their heads toward him as a father might.