“The look of the plain struck me with a sense of foreboding, or rather the feel of it in front of us, for we couldn’t see it; nothing was visible but a veil of snow hung from edge to edge of the world, above, below, in front of us, to left of us and right of us, everywhere.
“ ‘There, that’s the dog howling,’ added my uncle. ‘I’ll show him what I can do with a gun, I will. And that’ll be something done, at any rate.’
“But my father, who was a kindly man, answered: ‘We’d do better to go and look for the poor animal: he’s whining with hunger. The wretched beast is barking for help; he’s like a man shouting in distress. Come on.’
“We started off through the curtain, through the heavy ceaseless fall, through the foam that was filling the night and the air, moving, floating, falling; as it melted, it froze the flesh on our bones, froze it with a burning cold that sent a sharp swift stab of pain through the skin with each prick of the little white flakes.
“We sank to our knees in the soft cold feathery mass, and we had to lift our legs right up to get over the ground. The farther we advanced, the louder and clearer grew the howling of the dog. ‘There he is!’ cried my uncle. We stopped to observe him, like prudent campaigners coming upon the enemy at night.
“I couldn’t see anything; then I came up with the others and I saw him; he was a terrifying and fantastic object, that dog, a great black dog, a shaggy sheepdog with a head like a wolf, standing erect on his four feet at the far end of the long track of light that the lantern flung out across the snow. He didn’t move; he stared at us with never a sound.
“ ‘It’s queer he doesn’t rush at us or away from us,’ said my uncle. ‘I’ve the greatest mind to stretch him out with a shot.’
“ ‘No,’ my father said decidedly, ‘we must catch him.’
“ ‘But he’s not alone,’ my brother Jacques added. ‘He has something beside him.’
“He actually had something behind him, something grey and indistinguishable. We began to walk cautiously towards him.
“Seeing us draw near, the dog sat down on his haunches. He didn’t look vicious. He seemed, on the contrary, pleased that he had succeeded in attracting someone’s attention.
“My father went right up to him and patted him. The dog licked his hands; and we saw that he was fastened to the wheel of a small carriage, a sort of toy carriage wrapped all round in three or four woollen coverings. We lifted the wrappings carefully; Baptiste held his lantern against the opening of the carriage—which was like a kennel on wheels—and we saw inside a tiny sleeping child.
“We were so astonished that we couldn’t get out a single word. My father was the first to recover: he was warmhearted and somewhat emotional; he placed his hand on the top of the carriage and said: ‘Poor deserted thing, you shall belong to us.’ And he ordered my brother Jacques to wheel our find in front of us.
“ ‘A love-child,’ my father added, ‘whose poor mother came and knocked at my door on Epiphany night, in memory of the Christ-child.’
“He stood still again, and shouted into the darkness four times, at the top of his voice, to all the four corners of the heavens: ‘We have got him safe.’ Then he rested his hand on his brother’s shoulder and murmured: ‘Suppose you’d fired at the dog, François?’
“My uncle said nothing, but crossed himself earnestly in the darkness; he was very devout, for all his swaggering ways.
“We had loosed the dog, who followed us.
“Upon my word, our return to the house was a pretty sight. At first we had great difficulty in getting the carriage up the rampart staircase; we succeeded at last, however, and wheeled it right into the hall.
“How comically surprised and delighted and bewildered mamma was! And my poor little cousins (the youngest was six) were like four hens round a nest. At last we lifted the child, still sleeping, from its carriage. It was a girl about six weeks old. And in her clothes we found ten thousand francs in gold, yes, ten thousand francs, which papa invested to bring her in a dowry. So she wasn’t the child of poor parents … she may have been the child of a gentleman by a respectable young girl belonging to the town, or even … we made innumerable speculations, and we never knew anything … except that … never a thing … never a thing. … Even the dog wasn’t known to anyone. He didn’t belong to the district. In any event, the man or woman who had rung three times at our door knew very well what sort of people my parents were, when they chose them for their child.
“And that’s how Mademoiselle Pearl found her way into the Chantal house when she was six weeks old.
“It was later that she got the name of Mademoiselle Pearl. She was first christened Marie Simone Claire, Claire serving as her surname.
“We certainly made a quaint entry into the dining room with the tiny wide-awake creature, looking round her at the people and the lights, with wondering troubled blue eyes.
“We sat down at the table again, and the cake was cut. I was king and I chose Mademoiselle Pearl for queen, as you did just now. She hadn’t any idea that day what a compliment we were paying her.
“Well, the child was adopted, and brought up as one of the family. She grew up: years passed. She was a charming, gentle, obedient girl. Everyone loved her and she would have been shamefully spoiled if my mother had not seen to it that she wasn’t.
“My mother had a lively sense of what was fitting and a proper reverence for caste. She consented to treat little Claire as she did
