“‘M’sieu le Baron’

“‘Well, my boy?’

“‘You see, the thing I want is not physic.’

“‘Ha! what is it, then?’

“‘It’s marriage!’

“My father turned round and stared at him in astonishment.

“‘What’s that you say, eh?’

“’It’s marriage.”

“‘Marriage!  So, then, you jackass, you’re to love.’

“‘That’s how it is, M’sieu le Baron.’

“And my father began to laugh so immoderately that my mother called out through the wall of the next room: 

“‘What in the world is the matter with you, Gontran?’

“He replied: 

“‘Come here, Catherine.’

“And when she came in he told her, with tears in his eyes from sheer laughter, that his idiot of a servant-man was lovesick.

“But my mother, instead of laughing, was deeply affected.

“‘Who is it that you have fallen in love with, my poor fellow?’ she asked.

“He answered without hesitation: 

“‘With Louise, Madame le Baronne.’

“My mother said with the utmost gravity:  ’We must try to arrange this matter the best way we can.’

“So Louise was sent for and questioned by my mother; and she said in reply that she knew all about Jean’s liking for her, that in fact Jean had spoken to her about it several times, but that she did not want him.  She refused to say why.

“And two months elapsed during which my father and mother never ceased to urge this girl to marry Jean.  As she declared she was not in love with any other man, she could not give any serious reason for her refusal.  My father at last overcame her resistance by means of a big present of money, and started the pair of them on a farm—­this very farm.  I did not see them for three years, and then I learned that Louise had died of consumption.  But my father and mother died, too, in their turn, and it was two years more before I found myself face to face with Jean.

“At last one autumn day about the end of October the idea came into my head to go hunting on this part of my estate, which my father had told me was full of game.

“So one evening, one wet evening, I arrived at this house.  I was shocked to find my father’s old servant with perfectly white hair, though he was not more than forty-five or forty-six years of age.  I made him dine with me, at the very table where we are now sitting.  It was raining hard.  We could hear the rain battering at the roof, the walls, and the windows, flowing in a perfect deluge into the farmyard; and my dog was howling in the shed where the other dogs are howling to-night.

“All of a sudden, when the servant-maid had gone to bed, the man said in a timid voice: 

“‘M’sieu le Baron.’

“‘What is it, my dear Jean?’

“‘I have something to tell you.’

“‘Tell it, my dear Jean.’

“‘You remember Louise, my wife.’

“‘Certainly, I remember her.’