“There it is,” exclaimed the child, and he cried: “Mamma.”
A woman appeared, and the workman instantly left off smiling, for he at once perceived that there was no more fooling to be done with the tall pale girl, who stood austerely at her door as though to defend from one man the threshold of that house where she had already been betrayed by another. Intimidated, his cap in his hand, he stammered out:
“See, Madame, I have brought you back your little boy, who was lost near the river.”
But Simon flung his arms about his mother’s neck and told her, as he again began to cry:
“No, mamma, I wished to drown myself, because the others had beaten me—had beaten me—because I have no father.”
A painful blush covered the young woman’s cheeks, and, hurt to the quick, she embraced her child passionately, while the tears coursed down her face. The man, much moved, stood there, not knowing how to get away. But Simon suddenly ran up to him and said:
“Will you be my father?”
A deep silence ensued. La Blanchotte, dumb and tortured with shame, leaned against the wall, her hands upon her heart. The child, seeing that no answer was made him, replied:
“If you do not wish it, I shall return to drown myself.”
The workman took the matter as a jest and answered laughing:
“Why, yes, I wish it, certainly.”
“What is your name,” went on the child, “so that I may tell the others when they wish to know your name?”
“Philip,” answered the man.
Simon was silent a moment so that he might get the name well into his memory; then he stretched out his arms, quite consoled, and said:
“Well, then, Philip, you are my father.”
The workman, lifting him from the ground, kissed him hastily on both cheeks, and then strode away quickly.
When the child returned to school next day he was received with a spiteful laugh, and at the end of school, when the lad was about to begin again, Simon threw these words at his head as he would have done a stone: “My father’s name is Philip.”
Yells of delight burst out from all sides.
“Philip who? Philip what? What on earth is Philip? Where did you pick up your Philip?”
Simon answered nothing; and immovable in faith he defied them with his eye, ready to be martyred rather than fly before them. The schoolmaster came to his rescue and he returned home to his mother.
For about three months, the tall workman, Philip, frequently passed by La Blanchotte’s house, and sometimes made bold to speak to her when he saw her sewing near the window. She answered him civilly, always sedately, never joking with him, nor permitting him to enter her house. Notwithstanding this, being like all men, a bit of a coxcomb, he imagined that she was often rosier than usual when she chatted with him.
But a fallen reputation is so difficult to recover, and always remains so fragile that, in spite of the shy reserve La Blanchotte maintained, they already gossiped in the neighbourhood.
As for Simon, he loved his new father very much, and walked with him nearly every evening when the day’s work was done. He went regularly to school and mixed in a dignified way with his schoolfellows without ever answering them back.
One day, however, the lad who had first attacked him said to him:
“You have lied. You have no father called Philip.”
“Why do you say that?” demanded Simon, much disturbed.
The youth rubbed his hands. He replied: “Because if you had one he would be your mamma’s husband.”
Simon was confused by the truth of this reasoning; nevertheless he retorted:
“He is my father all the same.”
“That may well be,” exclaimed the urchin with a sneer, “but that is not being your father altogether.”
La Blanchotte’s little one bowed his head and went off dreaming in the direction of the forge belonging to old Loizon, where Philip worked.
This forge was entombed in trees. It was very dark there, the red glare of a formidable furnace alone lit up with great flashes five blacksmiths, who hammered upon their anvils with a terrible din. Standing enveloped in flame, they worked like demons, their eyes fixed on the red-hot iron they were pounding; and their dull ideas rising and falling with their hammers.
Simon entered without being noticed and quietly plucked his friend by the sleeve. Philip turned round. All at once the work came to a standstill and the men looked on very attentively. Then, in the midst of this unaccustomed silence, rose Simon’s piping voice.
“Philip, explain to me what La Michaude’s boy has just told me, that you are not altogether my father.”
“And why so?” asked the smith.
The child replied in all innocence:
“Because you are not my mamma’s husband.”
No one laughed. Philip remained standing, leaning his forehead upon the back of his great hands, which held the handle of his hammer upright upon the anvil. He mused. His four companions watched him, and, like a tiny mite among these giants, Simon anxiously waited. Suddenly, one of the smiths, voicing the sentiment of all, said to Philip:
“All the same La Blanchotte is a good and honest girl, stalwart and steady in spite of her misfortune, and one who would make a worthy wife for an honest man.”
“That is true,” remarked the three others.
The smith continued:
“Is it the girl’s fault if she has fallen? She had been promised marriage, and I know more than one who is much respected today and has sinned every bit as much.”
“That is true,” responded the three men in chorus.
He resumed:
“How hard she has toiled, poor thing, to educate her lad all alone, and how much she has wept since she no longer goes out, save to church, God only knows.”
“That is also true,” said the others.
Then no more was heard save the roar of the bellows which fanned the fire of the furnace. Philip hastily bent down towards Simon:
“Go and tell your mamma that I shall come to speak to her.”
Then he pushed the child out by the shoulders. He
