TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES:
In the plain text version text in italics is enclosed by underscores (italics), small caps are represented in upper case as in SMALL CAPS and words in bold are represented as in =bold=.
A number of words in this book have both hyphenated and non-hyphenated variants. For the words with both variants present the one more used has been kept.
Obvious punctuation and other printing errors have been corrected.
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SHORT STORY CLASSICS
(FOREIGN)
VOLUME FIVE FRENCH II
EDITED BY William Patten
WITH AN INTRODUCTION AND NOTES
P. F. COLLIER & SON NEW YORK
COPYRIGHT 1907 BY P. F. COLLIER & SON
The use of the copyrighted translations in this collection has been authorized by the authors or their representatives. The translations made especially for this collection are covered by the general copyright
CONTENTS--VOLUME V
PAGE
LA BRETONNE ANDRÉ THEURIET 1339
WHICH WAS THE MADMAN? EDMOND ABOUT 1349
THE GRAND MARRIAGE LUDOVIC HALÉVY 1379
THE ACCURSED HOUSE ÉMILE GABORIAU 1415
THE FÊTE AT COQUEVILLE ÉMILE ZOLA 1427
THE LOST CHILD FRANÇOIS COPPÉE 1471
PUTOIS ANATOLE FRANCE 1495
SAC-AU-DOS JORIS KARL HUYSMANS 1515
"BONJOUR, MONSIEUR" JEAN RICHEPIN 1559
THE BIT OF STRING GUY DE MAUPASSANT 1571
THE NECKLACE GUY DE MAUPASSANT 1581
THE WALL OPPOSITE PIERRE LOTI 1595
THE ANCESTOR PAUL BOURGET 1605
WHEN HE WAS A LITTLE BOY HENRI LAVEDAN 1639
A GENTLEMAN FINDS A WATCH GEORGES COURTELINE 1651
A YOUNG GIRL'S DIARY MARCEL PRÉVOST 1659
THE SIGN OF THE KEY AND THE CROSS HENRI DE RÉGNIER 1671
THE TELEGRAPH OPERATOR ALPHONSE ALLAIS 1685
LA BRETONNE BY CLAUDE ADHÉMAR ANDRÉ THEURIET
André Theuriet, born at Marly-le-Roi in 1833, went to Paris to study law, and finally became head of the Government Department of Finance. In 1857 appeared the charming collection of verses called "Chemin des Bois," which was crowned by the Academy, and which earned for the author the title of "Song Sparrow" from the great critic Sainte-Beuve.
Theuriet received, in 1890, the Vitel prize from the Academy for general literary excellence, and was admitted to that body in 1896. His style is sane, fresh, limpid, delicate, and rich in color. He is a lover of nature with a profound feeling for the peasant.
_Theuriet's standing is well assured when we consider that such men as Jules Claretie, Adolph Brisson, François Coppée, all contributed appreciations of Theuriet in "Les Annales Politiques et Littéraires," soon after his death, on April 23, 1907._
LA BRETONNE BY ANDRÉ THEURIET
Translated by B. C. Waggener. Copyright, 1891, by The Current Literature Publishing Company.
One November evening, the eve of Sainte-Catherine's Day, the gate of the Auberive prison turned upon its hinges to allow to pass out a woman of some thirty years, clad in a faded woolen gown and coiffed in a linen cap that framed in a singular fashion a face pale and puffed by that sickly-hued fat which develops on prison regimen. She was a prisoner whom they had just liberated, and whom her companions of detention called La Bretonne.
Condemned for infanticide, it was exactly, day for day, six years ago that the prison van had brought her to the Centrale. Now, in her former garb, and with her small stock of money received from the clerk in her pocket, she found herself free and with her roadpass stamped for Langres.
The courier for Langres, however, had long since gone. Cowed and awkward, she took her way stumblingly toward the chief inn of the borough, and with trembling voice asked shelter for the night. But the inn was crowded, and the aubergiste, who did not care to harbor "one of those birds from over yonder," counseled her to push on to the cabaret at the far end of the village.
La Bretonne passed on, and, more trembling and awkward than ever, knocked at the door of that cabaret, which, properly speaking, was but a cantine for laborers. The cabaretière also eyed her askance, scenting doubtless a "discharged" from the Centrale, and finally refused her on the plea that she had no bed to give her.
La Bretonne dared not insist, but with bowed head pursued her way, while at the bottom of her soul rose and grew a dull hatred for that world which thus repulsed her.
She had no other resource than to gain Langres afoot.
Toward the end of November, night comes quickly. Soon she found herself enveloped in darkness, on a grayish road that ran between two divisions of the forest, and where the north wind whistled fiercely, choked her with dust, and pelted her with dead leaves.
After six years of sedentary and recluse life her legs were stiff, the muscles knotted and her feet, accustomed to sabots, pinched and bruised by her new slippers. At the end of a league she felt them blistered and herself exhausted. She dropped upon a pile of stones by the wayside, shivering and asking herself if she was going to be forced to perish of cold and hunger in this black night, under this icy breeze, which froze her to the marrow.
All at once, in the solitude of the road, she seemed to hear the droning notes of a voice singing. She listened and distinguished the air of one of those caressing and monotonous chants with which one soothes young children.
She was not alone, then!
She struggled to her feet and in the direction from which the voice came, and there, at the turn of a crossroad, perceived a reddish light streaming through the branches. Five minutes later she was before a mud-walled hovel, whose roof, covered by squares of sod, leaned again the rock, and whose window had allowed to pass that beckoning ray.
With anxious heart she decided to knock.
The chant ceased instantly and a woman opened the door, a peasant woman, no older than La Bretonne herself, but faded and aged by work. Her bodice, torn in places, displayed the skin tanned and dirty; her red hair escaped disheveled from under a soiled stuff cap, and her gray eyes regarded with amazement the stranger whose face had in it something of touching loneliness.
"Good evening!" said she, lifting yet higher the sputtering lamp in her hand; "what do you desire?"
"I am unable to go on," murmured La Bretonne, in a voice broken by a sob; "the city is far, and if you will lodge me for the night, you will do me a service.... I have money; I will pay you for the trouble."
"Enter," replied the other, after a moment's hesitancy; "but why," continued she, in a tone more curious than suspicious, "did you not sleep at Auberive?"
"They would not give me a lodging," lowering her blue eyes and taken with a sudden scruple, "be--because, see you, I come from the Maison Centrale."
"So! the Maison Centrale! but no matter--enter--I fear nothing, having known only misery. Moreover, I've a conscience against turning a Christian from the door on a night like this. I'll give you a bed and a slice of cheese."
And she pulled from the eaves some bundles of dried heather and spread them as a pallet in the corner by the fire.
"Do you live here alone?" demanded La Bretonne, timidly.
"Yes, with my gâchette, going on seven years now. I earn our living by working in the wood."
"Your man, then, is dead?"
"Yes," said the other bruskly, "the gâchette has no father. Briefly, to each his sorrow! But come, behold your straw, and two or three potatoes left from supper. It is all I can offer you--"
She was called by a childish voice coming from a dark nook, separated from the room by a board partition.
"Good night!" she repeated, "the little one cries; I must go, but sleep you well!"
And taking up the lamp she passed into the closet, leaving La Bretonne crouched alone in the darkness.
Stretched upon her heather, after she had eaten her supper, she strove to close her eyes, but sleep would not come to her. Through the thin partition she heard the mother still softly talking to the child, whom the arrival of a stranger had wakened, and who did not wish to go to sleep again.
The mother soothed and fondled it with words of endearment that somehow strangely disturbed La Bretonne. That outburst of simple tenderness seemed to waken a confused maternal instinct in the soul of that girl condemned in the past for having stifled her new-born.
"If things had not gone so badly with me," thought La Bretonne, sorrowfully, "it would have been the same age as this little one here."
At that thought and at the sound of that childish voice, a sickening shudder seemed to shake her very vitals; something soft and tender to spring up in that soured heart, and an increasing need for the relief of tears.
"But come, come, my little one," the mother cried, "to sleep you must go! And if you are good and do as I say, to-morrow I'll take you to the Sainte-Catherine's Fair!"