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“I did it as a joke at first. She defended herself bravely, and at the first chance she ran to the door, drew back the bolt and fled.

“I scarcely saw her for several days. She would not let me come near her. But when my friend was cured and we were to get out on our travels again I saw her coming into my room about midnight the night before our departure, just after I had retired.

“She threw herself into my arms and embraced me passionately, giving me all the assurances of tenderness and despair that a woman can give when she does not know a word of our language.

“A week later I had forgotten this adventure, so common and frequent when one is travelling, the inn servants being generally destined to amuse travellers in this way.

“I was thirty before I thought of it again, or returned to Pont Labbe.

“But in 1876 I revisited it by chance during a trip into Brittany, which I made in order to look up some data for a book and to become permeated with the atmosphere of the different places.

“Nothing seemed changed. The chateau still laved its gray wall in the pond outside the little town; the inn was the same, though it had been repaired, renovated and looked more modern. As I entered it I was received by two young Breton girls of eighteen, fresh and pretty, bound up in their tight cloth bodices, with their silver caps and wide embroidered bands on their ears.

“It was about six o’clock in the evening. I sat down to dinner, and as the host was assiduous in waiting on me himself, fate, no doubt, impelled me to say:

“‘Did you know the former proprietors of this house? I spent about ten days here thirty years ago. I am talking old times.’

“‘Those were my parents, monsieur,’ he replied.

“Then I told him why we had stayed over at that time, how my comrade had been delayed by illness. He did not let me finish.

“‘Oh, I recollect perfectly. I was about fifteen or sixteen. You slept in the room at the end and your friend in the one I have taken for myself, overlooking the street.’

“It was only then that the recollection of the little maid came vividly to my mind. I asked: ‘Do you remember a pretty little servant who was then in your father’s employ, and who had, if my memory does not deceive me, pretty eyes and freshlooking teeth?’

“‘Yes, monsieur; she died in childbirth some time after.’

“And, pointing to the courtyard where a thin, lame man was stirring up the manure, he added:

“‘That is her son.’

“I began to laugh:

“‘He is not handsome and does not look much like his mother. No doubt he looks like his father.’

“‘That is very possible,’ replied the innkeeper; ‘but we never knew whose child it was. She died without telling any one, and no one here knew of her having a beau. Every one was hugely astonished when they heard she was enceinte, and no one would believe it.’

“A sort of unpleasant chill came over me, one of those painful surface wounds that affect us like the shadow of an impending sorrow. And I looked at the man in the yard. He had just drawn water for the horses and was carrying two buckets, limping as he walked, with a painful effort of his shorter leg. His clothes were ragged, he was hideously dirty, with long yellow hair, so tangled that it looked like strands of rope falling down at either side of his face.

“‘He is not worth much,’ continued the innkeeper; ‘we have kept him for charity’s sake. Perhaps he would have turned out better if he had been brought up like other folks. But what could one do, monsieur? No father, no mother, no money! My parents took pity on him, but he was not their child, you understand.’