“I also knew someone who lost a daughter; it was in Paris he found her.”
Immediately they set out for Paris.
When they reached the great city they were frightened by its size and by the crowds in the streets. But they realised that he must be amongst all these people, without knowing how to set about finding him. Then they were afraid they would not recognise him, for they had not seen him for fifteen years. They visited every street and square, stopping wherever they saw a crowd gathered, in the hope of a chance meeting, some prodigious stroke of luck, an act of pity on the part of Fate. They would often wander blindly ahead, clinging to each other, and looking so sad and so poor that people gave them alms without being asked. Every Sunday they spent the day in front of the churches, watching the crowds going in and out, and scanning each face for a distant resemblance. Several times they fancied they recognised him, but they were always mistaken.
At the door of one of the churches to which they returned most frequently there was an old man who sprinkled holy water, and who had become their friend. His own story was also very sad, and their commiseration for him led to a great friendship between them. They finally lived together in a wretched garret at the top of a big house, a great distance out, near the open fields, and sometimes the wheelwright took his new friend’s place at the church, when the old man was ill. One very harsh winter came, the old sprinkler of holy water died, and the parish priest appointed in his place the wheelwright, of whose misfortunes he had heard.
Then he came every morning and seated himself in the same place, on the same chair, wearing out the old stone column against which he leant with the continual rubbing of his back. He gazed fixedly at every man who entered, and he looked forward to Sunday with the impatience of a schoolboy, because that was the day when the church was constantly full of people.
He grew very old, getting weaker and weaker under the damp arches, and every day his hope crumbled away. By this time he knew everyone who came to Mass, their hours, their habits, and he could recognise their steps on the tiled floor. His life had become so narrowed that it was a great event for him when a stranger entered the church. One day two ladies came; one old and the other young. Probably a mother and daughter, he thought. Behind them a young man appeared, who followed them, and when they went out he saluted them. After having offered them holy water he took the arm of the older lady.
“That must be the young lady’s intended,” thought the wheelwright.
For the rest of the day he racked his memory to discover where he once had seen a young man like that. But the one he was thinking of must now be an old man, for he seemed to have known him away back in his youth.
The same man came back frequently to escort the two ladies, and this vague resemblance, remote yet familiar, which he could not identify, obsessed the old man so much that he made his wife come to aid his feeble memory.
One evening, as it was getting dark, the strangers entered together. When they had passed, the husband said:
“Well, do you know who he is?”
His wife was troubled and tried, in turn, to remember. Suddenly she whispered:
“Yes … yes … but he is darker, taller, stronger, and dressed like a gentlemen, yet, father, he has the same face, you know, as you had when you were young.”
The old man gave a start.
It was true, the young man resembled him, and he resembled his brother who was dead, and his father, whom he remembered while he was still young. They were so deeply stirred that they could not speak. The three people were coming down the aisle and going out. The man touched the sprinkler with his finger, and the old man who was holding it shook so much that the holy water rained upon the ground.
“Jean?” he cried.
The man stopped and looked at him.
“Jean?” he repeated softly.
The two ladies looked at him in astonishment.
Then for the third time he said, sobbing: “Jean?”
The man stooped and looked closely into his face, then a recollection of childhood flashed in his mind, and he replied:
“Father Pierre and mother Jeanne!”
He had forgotten everything, his father’s other name, and that of his own birthplace, but he still remembered these two words, so often repeated: “Father Pierre; mother Jeanne!”
He knelt down with his head on the knees of the old man and wept. Then he kissed his father and mother by turns, while their voices were choked by joy unlimited. The two ladies also cried, for they realised that great happiness had come. They all went home with the young man, who told them his story.
The circus people had kidnapped him, and for three years he had travelled with them through many countries. Then the company broke up, and one day an old lady in a château gave a sum of money to adopt him, because she liked him. As he was intelligent, they sent him to school and college, and, as the old lady had no children, she left her fortune to him. He also had searched for his parents, but as the only thing he could remember was the two names, “father Pierre and mother Jeanne,” he could not discover them. Now he was going to be married, and he introduced his fiancée, who was as good as she was pretty.
When the two old people, in their turn, had related their sorrows and sufferings, they embraced him again, and
