The sky was full of stars as he knocked at La Blanchotte’s door.  He had on his Sunday blouse, a clean shirt, and his beard was trimmed.  The young woman showed herself upon the threshold, and said in a grieved tone: 

“It is ill to come thus when night has fallen, Mr. Philip.”

He wished to answer, but stammered and stood confused before her.

She resumed: 

“You understand, do you not, that it will not do for me to be talked about again.”

“What does that matter to me, if you will be my wife!”

No voice replied to him, but he believed that he heard in the shadow of the room the sound of a falling body.  He entered quickly; and Simon, who had gone to bed, distinguished the sound of a kiss and some words that his mother murmured softly.  Then, all at once, he found himself lifted up by the hands of his friend, who, holding him at the length of his herculean arms, exclaimed: 

“You will tell them, your schoolmates, that your papa is Philip Remy, the blacksmith, and that he will pull the ears of all who do you any harm.”

On the morrow, when the school was full and lessons were about to begin, little Simon stood up, quite pale with trembling lips: 

“My papa,” said he in a clear voice, “is Philip Remy, the blacksmith, and he has promised to pull the ears of all who does me any harm.”

This time no one laughed, for he was very well known, was Philip Remy, the blacksmith, and was a papa of whom any one in the world would have been proud.

Original short stories, Vol. 12.

Guy de maupassant
original short stories
Translated by
Albert M. C. McMASTER, B.A. 
A. E. Henderson, B.A. 
Mme. Quesada and Others

VOLUME XII.

THE CHILD

Lemonnier had remained a widower with one child.  He had loved his wife devotedly, with a tender and exalted love, without a slip, during their entire married life.  He was a good, honest man, perfectly simple, sincere, without suspicion or malice.

He fell in love with a poor neighbor, proposed and was accepted.  He was making a very comfortable living out of the wholesale cloth business, and he did not for a minute suspect that the young girl might have accepted him for anything else but himself.

She made him happy.  She was everything to him; he only thought of her, looked at her continually, with worshiping eyes.  During meals he would make any number of blunders, in order not to have to take his eyes from the beloved face; he would pour the wine in his plate and the water in the salt-cellar, then he would laugh like a child, repeating: 

“You see, I love you too much; that makes me crazy.”

She would smile with a calm and resigned look; then she would look away, as though embarrassed by the adoration of her husband, and try to make him talk about something else; but he would take her hand under the table and he would hold it in his, whispering: