“My husband died.  Then my parents, and then my two sisters.  When Death enters a house it seems as if he were hurrying to do his utmost, so as not to have to return for a long time after that.  He spares only one or two to mourn the others.

“I remained alone.  My tall son was then studying law.  I was hoping to live and die near him, and I went to him so that we could live together.  But he had fallen into the ways of young men, and he gave me to understand that I was in his way.  So I left.  I was wrong in doing so, but I suffered too much in feeling myself in his way, I, his mother!  And I came back home.

“I hardly ever saw him again.

“He married.  What a joy!  At last we should be together for good.  I should have grandchildren.  His wife was an Englishwoman, who took a dislike to me.  Why?  Perhaps she thought that I loved him too much.

“Again I was obliged to go away.  And I was alone.  Yes, monsieur.

“Then he went to England, to live with them, with his wife’s parents.  Do you understand?  They have him—­they have my son for themselves.  They have stolen him from me.  He writes to me once a month.  At first he came to see me.  But now he no longer comes.

“It is now four years since I saw him last.  His face then was wrinkled and his hair white.  Was that possible?  This man, my son, almost an old man?  My little rosy child of old?  No doubt I shall never see him again.

“And so I travel about all the year.  I go east and west, as you see, with no companion.

“I am like a lost dog.  Adieu, monsieur! don’t stay here with me for it hurts me to have told you all this.”

I went down the hill, and on turning round to glance back, I saw the old woman standing on a broken wall, looking out upon the mountains, the long valley and Lake Chambon in the distance.

And her skirt and the queer little shawl which she wore around her thin shoulders were fluttering tike a flag in the wind.

MADEMOISELLE COCOTTE

We were just leaving the asylum when I saw a tall, thin man in a corner of the court who kept on calling an imaginary dog.  He was crying in a soft, tender voice:  “Cocotte!  Come here, Cocotte, my beauty!” and slapping his thigh as one does when calling an animal.  I asked the physician, “Who is that man?” He answered:  “Oh! he is not at all interesting.  He is a coachman named Francois, who became insane after drowning his dog.”

I insisted:  “Tell me his story.  The most simple and humble things are sometimes those which touch our hearts most deeply.”

Here is this man’s adventure, which was obtained from a friend of his, a groom: 

There was a family of rich bourgeois who lived in a suburb of Paris.  They had a villa in the middle of a park, at the edge of the Seine.  Their coachman was this Francois, a country fellow, somewhat dull, kind-hearted, simple and easy to deceive.