“ ‘The one who looked after my table was very young, pretty, and bubbling over with laughter. I offered her a drink, which she readily accepted. She sat down opposite me and looked me over with an expert eye, unable to make out what kind of masculine creature she had to deal with. She was fair-haired, fair altogether; she was a clear-skinned, healthy girl, and I guessed her to be plump and rosy under the swelling folds of her bodice. I murmured all the meaningless gallantries that one always says to these girls, and as she was really very charming, the whim suddenly seized me to take her out … just to celebrate my fortieth birthday. It was neither long nor difficult to arrange. She was unattached … had been for a fortnight, she told me … and she at once agreed to come and have supper with me at the Halles when her work was over.
“ ‘As I was afraid that she wouldn’t stick to me—you never know what will happen, nor who’ll come into these beershops, nor what a woman will take into her head to do—I stayed there the whole evening, waiting for her.
“ ‘I had been unattached myself for a month or two, and as I watched this adorable neophyte of Love flitting from table to table, I wondered if I shouldn’t do as well to take her on for a time. What I’m describing to you is one of the daily commonplace adventures in a Parisian’s life.
“ ‘Forgive these crude details; men who have never known an ideal love take and choose their woman as they choose a chop at the butcher’s, without bothering about anything but the quality of their flesh.
“ ‘Well, I went with her to her house—for I’ve too much respect for my own sheets. It was a workgirl’s tiny room, on the fifth floor, clean and bare; I spent two delightful hours there. She had an uncommonly graceful and charming way with her, that little girl.
“ ‘When I was ready to go, I walked towards her mantelshelf to deposit thereon the usual present. I had arranged a day for a second interview with the little wench, who was still lying in bed. I saw dimly a clock under a glass case, two vases of flowers, and two photographs, one of which was very old, one of those negatives on glass called daguerreotypes. I bent casually to look at this portrait, and I stood there paralysed, too surprised to understand. … It was myself, my first portrait, one that I had had made long ago when I was a student living in the Quartier Latin.
“ ‘I snatched it up to examine it more closely. I’d made no mistake … and I felt like laughing, it struck me as so queer and unexpected.
“ ‘ “Who is this gentleman?” I demanded.
“ ‘ “That’s my father, whom I never knew,” she answered. “Mamma left it to me and told me to keep it, because it would be useful to me some day. …”
“ ‘She hesitated, burst out laughing, and added: “I don’t know what for, upon my word. It’s not likely he’ll come and recognise me.”
“ ‘My heart leaped madly, like the galloping of a runaway horse. I laid the picture on its face on the mantelshelf, put two hundred-franc notes that I had in my pocket on top of it, without at all thinking what I was doing, and hurried out crying: “See you again soon! … Goodbye, my dear … goodbye!”
“ ‘I heard her answer: “On Wednesday.” I was on the darkened stairs and groping my way down them.
“ ‘When I got outside, I saw that it was raining, and I set off with great strides, taking the first road.
“ ‘I walked straight on, dazed, bewildered, raking my memory. Was it possible? Yes, I suddenly remembered a girl who had written to me, about a month after we had broken off relations, that she was with child by me. I had torn up or burned the letter, and forgotten the whole thing. I ought to have looked at the photograph of the woman on the little girl’s mantelshelf. But should I have recognised her? I had a vague memory of it as the photograph of an old woman.
“ ‘I reached the quay. I saw a bench and sat down. It was raining. Now and then people hurried past under umbrellas. Life had become for me hateful and revolting, full of miserable shameful things, infamies willed or predestined. My daughter … perhaps I had just possessed my own daughter. And Paris, vast sombre Paris, gloomy, dirty, sad, black, with all its shuttered houses, was full of suchlike things, adulteries, incests, violated children. I remembered all I’d been told of bridges haunted by vicious and degraded wretches.
“ ‘Without wishing or knowing it, I had sunk lower than those vile creatures. I had climbed into my daughter’s bed.
“ ‘I could have thrown myself in the water. I was mad. I wandered about until daybreak, then I went back to my house to think things out.
“ ‘I decided on what seemed to me the most prudent course. I would have a solicitor send for the girl and ask her under what circumstances her mother had given her the portrait of the man she believed to be her father: I would tell him that I was acting on behalf of a friend.
“ ‘The solicitor carried out my instructions. It was on her deathbed that the woman had made a statement about the father of her child, and before a priest whose name I was given.
“ ‘Then, always in the name of this unknown friend, I made half my fortune over to this child, about a hundred and forty thousand francs, arranging it so that she could only touch the interest of it; then I sent in my resignation, and here I am.
“ ‘I was wandering along this coast, and I found this hill and stopped here … since … I have forgotten how long since that was.
“ ‘What do you think of me? … and of what I did?’
“I gave him
