Short Fiction

about the time, determined not to miss their train.

M. Dubuis had never had a pistol in his hands in his life. He was placed twenty paces from his foe.

“Are you ready?” he was asked.

As he answered: “Yes, monsieur,” he noticed that one of the Englishmen had put up his umbrella, to keep off the sun.

“Fire!” commanded a voice.

M. Dubuis fired, at random, without waiting, and with amazement saw the Prussian standing before him totter, throw up his arms, and fall flat on his nose. He had killed him.

One of the Englishmen uttered an “oh,” quivering with pleasure, satisfied curiosity, and happy impatience. The other, still holding his watch in his hand, seized M. Dubuis’ arm and led him off, at the double, towards the station.

The first Englishman gave the time as he ran, his fists closed and his elbows tucked into his sides:

“One, two! One, two!”

And all three men trotted on, despite their paunches, like three clowns in a comic paper.

The train was just starting. They jumped into their compartment. Then the Englishmen took off their travelling-caps and waved them in the air, and, three times in succession, they shouted:

“Hip, hip, hip, hurrah!”

Then, one after the other, they gravely offered their right hands to M. Dubuis, and went back and sat down again side by side in their corner.

The Little One

Monsieur Lemonnier had remained a widower with one child. He had loved his wife madly, with a noble and tender love, that never failed, throughout the whole of their life together. He was a good, honest fellow, simple, very simple in fact, free from diffidence and malice.

Having fallen in love with a poor neighbour, he asked for her hand and married her. He was in a fairly prosperous drapery business, was making quite a good amount of money, and did not for one moment imagine that the girl might not have accepted him for himself alone.

At all events she made him happy. He had no eyes for anybody or anything but her, thought only of her, and looked at her continually in an abandon of adoration. During meals he would commit a thousand blunders rather than look away from the beloved face; he would pour the wine into his plate and the water into the saltcellar, and then would burst out laughing like a child, declaring:

“There, you see I love you too much; it makes me do such a lot of silly things.”

And she would smile, with an air of calm resignation, and then would turn away her eyes, as though embarrassed by her husband’s worship, and would try to make him talk, to chat on any subject; but he would reach across the table and take her hand, and, holding it in his, would murmur:

“My little Jeanne, my dear little Jeanne.”

She would end by growing vexed and exclaiming:

“Oh, do be reasonable; get on with your dinner, and let me get on with mine!”

He would utter a sigh and break off a mouthful of bread, which he would proceed slowly to munch.

For five years they had no children. Then suddenly she found herself with child. It was a delirious happiness for them. He would never leave her during the whole of her pregnancy; to such an extent, in fact, that her maid, an old nurse who had brought her up and was given to speaking her mind to them, would sometimes thrust him out of the house and lock the door, so as to force him to take the air.

He had formed an intimate friendship with a young man who had known his wife since her childhood, and who was second head clerk at the Prefecture. Monsieur Duretour dined three times a week at the Lemonniers’, brought flowers for Madame and sometimes a box at the theatre; and often, during dessert, the kind, affectionate Lemonnier would turn to his wife and exclaim:

“With a comrade like you and a friend like him, one is perfectly happy on earth.”

She died in childbed. He nearly died too. But the sight of the child gave him courage: a little shrivelled creature that moaned.

He loved the baby with a passionate and grief-stricken love, a morbid love, wherein remained the remembrance of death, but wherein survived something of his adoration of the dead woman. The boy was his wife’s flesh, her continued being, a quintessence of her, as it were. He was her very life poured into another body; she had disappeared that he might exist.⁠ ⁠… And the father embraced him frantically.⁠ ⁠…

But also the child had killed her, had taken, stolen that adored existence, had fed upon it, had drunk up her share of life.⁠ ⁠… And Monsieur Lemonnier replaced his son in the cradle and sat down beside him to contemplate him. He remained there for hours and hours, watching him, musing of a thousand sad or sweet things. Then, as the child was sleeping, he stooped over his face and wept into his coverings.

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The child grew. The father could not forgo his presence for an hour; he would prowl about the nursery, take him out for walks, put on his clothes, wash him, give him his meals. His friend, Monsieur Duretour, also seemed to cherish the baby, and would embrace him with rapture, with those frenzies of affection which are a parent’s property. He would make him leap in his arms or ride a cockhorse for hours upon his leg, and suddenly, overturning him upon his knees, would raise his short frock and kiss the brat’s fat thighs and round little calves.

“Isn’t he a darling, isn’t he a darling!” would murmur Monsieur Lemonnier in delight, and Monsieur Duretour would clasp the child in his arms, tickling his neck with his moustache.

Only Céleste, the old nurse, seemed to have no affection for the little one. She was vexed at his pranks, and seemed exasperated by the cajolery of the two men.

“Is that any way to bring up a child?” she would exclaim. “You’ll make a perfect monkey of him.”

More years went by, and Jean attained