The lad next Simon suddenly put his tongue out at him with a waggish air and shouted at him:
“No father! No father!”
Simon seized him by the hair with both hands and set to work to kick his legs while he bit his cheek ferociously. A tremendous struggle ensued. The two boys were separated and Simon found himself beaten, torn, bruised, rolled on the ground in the middle of the ring of applauding little vagabonds. As he arose, mechanically brushing his little blouse all covered with dust with his hand, someone shouted at him:
“Go and tell your father.”
He then felt a great sinking in his heart. They were stronger than he, they had beaten him and he had no answer to give them, for he knew it was true that he had no father. Full of pride he tried for some moments to struggle against the tears which were suffocating him. He had a choking fit, and then without cries he began to weep with great sobs which shook him incessantly. Then a ferocious joy broke out among his enemies, and, just like savages in fearful festivals, they took one another by the hand and danced in a circle about him as they repeated in refrain:
“No father! No father!”
But suddenly Simon ceased sobbing. Frenzy overtook him. There were stones under his feet; he picked them up and with all his strength hurled them at his tormentors. Two or three were struck and ran away yelling, and so formidable did he appear that the rest became panic-stricken. Cowards, like a jeering crowd in the presence of an exasperated man, they broke up and fled. Left alone, the little thing without a father set off running toward the fields, for a recollection had been awakened which nerved his soul to a great determination. He made up his mind to drown himself in the river.
He remembered, in fact, that eight days ago a poor devil who begged for his livelihood had thrown himself into the water because he was destitute. Simon had been there when they fished him out again; and the sight of the fellow, who had seemed to him so miserable and ugly, had then impressed him—his pale cheeks, his long drenched beard, and his open eyes being full of calm. The bystanders had said:
“He is dead.”
And someone had added:
“He is quite happy now.”
So Simon wished to drown himself also because he had no father, just as the wretched man did who had no money.
He reached the water and watched it flowing. Some fishes were rising briskly in the clear stream and occasionally made little leaps and caught the flies on the surface. He stopped crying in order to watch them, for their feeding interested him vastly. But, at intervals, as in the lulls of a tempest, when tremendous gusts of wind snap off trees and then die away, this thought would return to him with intense pain:
“I am about to drown myself because I have no father.”
It was very warm and lovely. The pleasant sunshine warmed the grass; the water shone like a mirror; and Simon enjoyed for some minutes the happiness of that languor which follows weeping, desirous even of falling asleep there upon the grass in the warmth of noon.
A little green frog leaped from under his feet. He endeavoured to catch it. It escaped him. He pursued it and lost it three times following. At last he caught it by one of its hind legs and began to laugh as he saw the efforts the creature made to escape. It gathered itself up on its large legs and then with a violent spring suddenly stretched them out as stiff as two bars. Its eyes stared wide open in their round, golden circle, and it beat the air with its front limbs, using them as though they were hands. It reminded him of a toy made with straight slips of wood nailed zigzag one on the other, which by a similar movement regulated the exercise of the little soldiers fastened thereon. Then he thought of his home and of his mother, and overcome by great sorrow he again began to weep. His limbs trembled; and he placed himself on his knees and said his prayers as before going to bed. But he was unable to finish them, for such hurried and violent sobs overtook him that he was completely overwhelmed. He thought no more, he no longer heeded anything around him but was wholly given up to tears.
Suddenly a heavy hand was placed upon his shoulder, and a rough voice asked him:
“What is it that causes you so much grief, my little man?”
Simon turned round. A tall workman, with a black beard and curly hair, was staring at him good-naturedly. He answered with his eyes and throat full of tears:
“They have beaten me because I—I have no father—no father.”
“What!” said the man smiling, “why, everybody has one.”
The child answered painfully amid his spasms of grief:
“But I—I—I have none.”
Then the workman became serious. He had recognized La Blanchotte’s son, and although a recent arrival to the neighbourhood he had a vague idea of her history.
“Well,” said he, “console yourself, my boy, and come with me home to your mother. You’ll have a father.”
And so they started on the way, the big one holding the little one by the hand. The man smiled again, for he was not sorry to see this Blanchotte, who by popular report was one of the prettiest girls in the countryside, and, perhaps, he said to himself at the bottom of his heart, that a lass who had erred once might very well err again.
They arrived in front of a very neat little
