“A week later I had forgotten this adventure, so common and frequent when one is travelling, the servants of the inns being generally destined to entertain travellers in this manner.
“Thirty years passed without my thinking of, or returning to, Pont-Labbé. Then, in 1876, I happened to go there, in the course of an excursion into Brittany which I had undertaken to get material for a book and to make myself familiar with the landscape.
“Nothing seemed to have changed. The castle still soaked its grey walls in the pond at the entrance of the little town; the inn was there, too, although repaired, remodelled, with a modern air. On entering I was received by two young Breton girls of about eighteen, fresh and pretty, enlaced in their narrow cloth bodices, with their silver headdress and large embroidered ear caps.
“It was about six o’clock in the evening. I sat down to dine and as the host was serving me himself, fate, without doubt, led me to ask him: ‘Did you know the former master of this house? I spent a fortnight here once, thirty years ago. I am speaking of very far-off times.’
“He answered: ‘Those were my parents, sir.’
“Then I told him the occasion of my stopping there, recalling my being detained by the illness of my comrade. He did not allow me to finish:
“ ‘Oh! I remember that perfectly,’ said he; ‘I was fifteen or sixteen then. You slept in the room at the end of the hall and your friend in the one that is now mine, looking on to the street.’
“Then for the first time, a vivid recollection of the pretty maid came back to me. I asked: ‘Do you recall a nice little servant that your father had, who had, if I remember, pretty blue eyes and fine teeth?’
“He replied: ‘Yes, sir; she died in childbirth some time after.’
“And pointing toward the courtyard where a thin lame man was turning over some manure, he added: ‘That is her son.’
“I began to laugh. ‘He is not beautiful, and does not resemble his mother at all. Takes after his father, no doubt.’
“The innkeeper replied: ‘It may be; but they never knew who his father was. She died without telling, and no one here knew she had a lover. It was a tremendous surprise when we found it out. No one would believe it.’
“A kind of disagreeable shiver went over me, one of those painful suggestions that touch the heart, like the approach of a heavy sorrow. I looked at the man in the yard. He came now to draw some water for the horses and carried two pails, limping, making grievous efforts with the leg that was shorter. He was ragged and hideously dirty, with long yellow hair, so matted that it hung in strings down his cheeks.
“The innkeeper added: ‘He is not up to much, and has only been kept here out of charity. Perhaps he would have turned out better if he had been brought up properly. But, you see how it is, sir?
“ ‘No father, no mother, no money! My parents took pity on him as a child, but after all—he was not theirs, you see.’
“I said nothing.
“I went to bed in my old room, and all night I could think of nothing but that frightful stable boy, repeating to myself: ‘What if that were my son! Could I have killed that girl and brought that creature into existence?’
“It was possible, of course. I resolved to speak to this man and to find out exactly the date of his birth. A difference of two months would set my doubts at rest.
“I had him come to me the next day. But he could not speak French either. He seemed not to understand anything. Besides, he was absolutely ignorant of his age, which one of the maids asked him for me. And he stood in front of me like an idiot, rolling his cap in his knotty and disgusting paws, laughing stupidly, with something of the old laugh of the mother in the corners of his mouth and eyes.
“But the host came along, and went to look up the birth certificate of the poor wretch. He entered this life eight months and twenty-six days after my departure from Pont-Labbé, because I recalled perfectly arriving at Lorient on the fifteenth of August. The record said: ‘Father unknown.’ The mother was called Jeanne Karradec.
“Then my heart began to beat rapidly. I could not speak, I felt so choked with emotion. And I looked at that brute, whose long yellow hair seemed a more sordid dung heap than that of beasts. And the wretch, embarrassed by my look, ceased to laugh, turned his head, and tried to get away.
“Every day I would wander along the little river, sadly reflecting. But what was the use? Nothing could give me any certainty. For hours and hours I would weigh all the reasons, good and bad, for and against the chances of my paternity, worrying myself with intricate suppositions, only to return again to the horrible suspicion, then to the conviction, more atrocious still, that this man was my son.
“I could not dine and I retired to my room. It was a long time before I could sleep. Then sleep came, a sleep haunted with insupportable visions. I could see this ninny laughing in my face and calling me ‘Papa.’ Then he would change into a dog and bite me in the calf of my leg. In vain I tried to free myself, he would follow me always, and, instead of barking he would speak, abusing me. Then he would appear before my colleagues at the Academy, called together for the purpose of deciding whether I was his father. And one of them cried: ‘It is indubitable! See how he resembles him!’
“And in fact, I perceived that the monster did resemble me.
