Short Fiction

revealed two hundred men lying on the ground in front of them. A brief report died away in the silence of the snow, and all twelve, with their twelve horses, fell.

After a long wait the march was resumed, the old man they had picked up acting as guide. At length a distant voice shouted: “Who goes there?” Another voice nearer at hand gave the password. There was another wait, while the parley proceeded. The snow had ceased to fall. A cold wind swept the sky, behind which innumerable stars glittered. They grew pale and the eastern sky became pink.

A staff-officer came up to receive the detachment, but just as he was asking who was on the stretcher, the latter began to move, two little hands opened the heavy coats, and a charming little face, as pink as the dawn, with eyes more bright than the stars which had disappeared, replied:

“It is I, Sir.”

The delighted soldiers applauded, and carried the girl in triumph right into the middle of the camp where the arms were stored. Soon afterwards General Carrel arrived. At nine o’clock the Prussians attacked. At noon they retreated.

That evening, as Lieutenant Laré was dropping off to sleep on a heap of straw, utterly worn out, the general sent for him. He found him in his tent chatting with the old man whom they had picked up during the night. As soon as he entered the general took him by the hand, and turned to the stranger:

“My dear comte,” said he, “here is the young man of whom you were speaking a while back. He is one of my best officers.”

He smiled, lowered his voice, and repeated:

“The best.”

Then, turning to the astonished lieutenant, he introduced “Comte de Ronfi-Quédissac.”

The old gentleman seized his two hands:

“My dear lieutenant, you have saved my daughter’s life, and there is only one way in which I can thank you.⁠ ⁠… You will come in a few months’ time and tell me⁠ ⁠… whether you like her.⁠ ⁠…”

Exactly one year later to the day, in the Church of St. Thomas Aquinas, Captain Laré was married to Mademoiselle Louise Hortense Geneviève de Ronfi-Quédissac. She brought with her a dowry of six hundred thousand francs, and they say she was the prettiest bride of the year.

Simon’s Father

Noon had just struck. The school-door opened and the youngsters streamed out tumbling over one another in their haste to get out quickly. But instead of promptly dispersing and going home to dinner as was their daily wont, they stopped a few paces off, broke up into knots and set to whispering.

The fact was that that morning Simon, the son of La Blanchotte, had, for the first time, attended school.

They had all of them in their families heard of La Blanchotte; and although in public she was welcome enough, the mothers among themselves treated her with compassion of a somewhat disdainful kind, which the children had caught without in the least knowing why.

As for Simon himself, they did not know him, for he never went abroad, and did not play around with them through the streets of the village or along the banks of the river. So they did not like him much, and it was with a certain delight, mingled with astonishment, that they gathered in groups this morning, repeating to each other this phrase pronounced by a lad of fourteen or fifteen who appeared to know all about it, so sagaciously did he wink: “You know Simon⁠—well, he has no father.”

La Blanchotte’s son appeared in his turn upon the threshold of the school.

He was seven or eight years old, rather pale, very neat, with a timid and almost awkward manner.

He was making his way back to his mother’s house when the various groups of his schoolfellows, perpetually whispering, and watching him with the mischievous and heartless eyes of children bent upon playing a nasty trick, gradually surrounded him and ended by enclosing him altogether. There he stood amongst them, surprised and embarrassed, not understanding what they were going to do to him. But the lad who had brought the news, puffed up with the success he had met with, demanded:

“What is your name?”

He answered: “Simon.”

“Simon what?” retorted the other.

The child, altogether bewildered, repeated: “Simon.”

The lad shouted at him: “You must be named Simon something! That is not a name⁠—Simon indeed!”

And he, on the brink of tears, replied for the third time:

“My name is Simon.”

The urchins began laughing. The lad, triumphantly lifted up his voice: “You can see plainly that he has no father.”

A deep silence ensued. The children were dumbfounded by this extraordinary, impossibly monstrous thing⁠—a boy who had no father; they looked upon him as a phenomenon, an unnatural being, and they felt rising in them the hitherto inexplicable pity of their mothers for La Blanchotte. As for Simon, he had propped himself against a tree to avoid falling, and he stood there as if paralysed by an irreparable disaster. He sought to explain, but he could think of no answer for them, no way to deny this horrible charge that he had no father. At last he shouted at them quite recklessly: “Yes, I have one.”

“Where is he?” demanded the boy.

Simon was silent, he did not know. The children shrieked, tremendously excited. These sons of the soil, more animal than human, experienced the cruel craving which makes the fowls of a farmyard destroy one of their own kind as soon as it is wounded. Simon suddenly spied a little neighbour, the son of a widow, whom he had always seen, as he himself was to be seen, quite alone with his mother.

“And no more have you,” he said, “no more have you a father.”

“Yes,” replied the other, “I have one.”

“Where is he?” rejoined Simon.

“He is dead,” declared the brat with superb dignity, “he is in the cemetery, is my father.”

A murmur of approval rose amid the scapegraces, as if the fact of possessing a father dead in a cemetery made their comrade big enough to crush the