An old retired gendarme who had an inn in the next village, and a pretty daughter, was arrested and shot.

LASTING LOVE

It was the end of the dinner that opened the shooting season.  The Marquis de Bertrans with his guests sat around a brightly lighted table, covered with fruit and flowers.  The conversation drifted to love.  Immediately there arose an animated discussion, the same eternal discussion as to whether it were possible to love more than once.  Examples were given of persons who had loved once; these were offset by those who had loved violently many times.  The men agreed that passion, like sickness, may attack the same person several times, unless it strikes to kill.  This conclusion seemed quite incontestable.  The women, however, who based their opinion on poetry rather than on practical observation, maintained that love, the great passion, may come only once to mortals.  It resembles lightning, they said, this love.  A heart once touched by it becomes forever such a waste, so ruined, so consumed, that no other strong sentiment can take root there, not even a dream.  The marquis, who had indulged in many love affairs, disputed this belief.

“I tell you it is possible to love several times with all one’s heart and soul.  You quote examples of persons who have killed themselves for love, to prove the impossibility of a second passion.  I wager that if they had not foolishly committed suicide, and so destroyed the possibility of a second experience, they would have found a new love, and still another, and so on till death.  It is with love as with drink.  He who has once indulged is forever a slave.  It is a thing of temperament.”

They chose the old doctor as umpire.  He thought it was as the marquis had said, a thing of temperament.

“As for me,” he said, “I once knew of a love which lasted fifty-five years without one day’s respite, and which ended only with death.”  The wife of the marquis clasped her hands.

“That is beautiful!  Ah, what a dream to be loved in such a way!  What bliss to live for fifty-five years enveloped in an intense, unwavering affection!  How this happy being must have blessed his life to be so adored!”

The doctor smiled.

“You are not mistaken, madame, on this point the loved one was a man.  You even know him; it is Monsieur Chouquet, the chemist.  As to the woman, you also know her, the old chair-mender, who came every year to the chateau.”  The enthusiasm of the women fell.  Some expressed their contempt with “Pouah!” for the loves of common people did not interest them.  The doctor continued:  “Three months ago I was called to the deathbed of the old chair-mender.  The priest had preceded me.  She wished to make us the executors of her will.  In order that we might understand her conduct, she told us the story of her life.  It is most singular and touching:  Her father and mother were both chair-menders.  She had never lived in a house.  As a little child she wandered about with them, dirty, unkempt, hungry.  They visited many towns, leaving their horse, wagon and dog just outside the limits, where the child played in the grass alone until her parents had repaired all the broken chairs in the place.  They seldom spoke, except to cry, ‘Chairs!  Chairs!  Chair-mender!’