unnatural
to sell one's child; that it was horrible, disgusting, bribery. Sometimes
she would take her Charlot in her arms, ostentatiously exclaiming, as if
he understood:

"I didn't sell you, I didn't! I didn't sell you, my little one! I'm not
rich, but I don't sell my children!"

The Vallins lived comfortably, thanks to the pension. That was the cause
of the unappeasable fury of the Tuvaches, who had remained miserably
poor. Their eldest went away to serve his time in the army; Charlot alone
remained to labor with his old father, to support the mother and two
younger sisters.

He had reached twenty-one years when, one morning, a brilliant carriage
stopped before the two cottages. A young gentleman, with a gold
watch-chain, got out, giving his hand to an aged, white-haired lady. The
old lady said to him: "It is there, my child, at the second house." And
he entered the house of the Vallins as though at home.

The old mother was washing her aprons; the infirm father slumbered at the
chimney-corner. Both raised their heads, and the young man said:

"Good-morning, papa; good-morning, mamma!"

They both stood up, frightened! In a flutter, the peasant woman dropped
her soap into the water, and stammered:

"Is it you, my child? Is it you, my child?"

He took her in his arms and hugged her, repeating: "Good-morning, mamma,"
while the old man, all a-tremble, said, in his calm tone which he never
lost: "Here you are, back again, Jean," as if he had just seen him a
month ago.

When they had got to know one another again, the parents wished to take
their boy out in the neighborhood, and show him. They took him to the
mayor, to the deputy, to the cure, and to the schoolmaster.

Charlot, standing on the threshold of his cottage, watched him pass. In
the evening, at supper, he said to the old people: "You must have been
stupid to let the Vallins' boy be taken."

The mother answered, obstinately: "I wouldn't sell my child."

The father remained silent. The son continued:

"It is unfortunate to be sacrificed like that."

Then Father Tuvache, in an angry tone, said:

"Are you going to reproach us for having kept you?" And the young man
said, brutally:

"Yes, I reproach you for having been such fools. Parents like you make
the misfortune of their children. You deserve that I should leave you."
The old woman wept over her plate. She moaned, as she swallowed the
spoonfuls of soup, half of which she spilled: "One may ki