mother, while they were almost
breathless from intense joy.

The two ladies also wept, understanding as they did that some great
happiness had come to pass.

Then they all went to the young man's house and he told them his history.
The circus people had carried him off. For three years he traveled with
them in various countries. Then the troupe disbanded, and one day an old
lady in a chateau had paid to have him stay with her because she liked
his appearance. As he was intelligent, he was sent to school, then to
college, and the old lady having no children, had left him all her money.
He, for his part, had tried to find his parents, but as he could remember
only the two names, "Papa Pierre, Mamma Jeanne," he had been unable to do
so. Now he was about to be married, and he introduced his fiancee, who
was very good and very pretty.

When the two old people had told their story in their turn he kissed them
once more. They sat up very late that night, not daring to retire lest
the happiness they had so long sought should escape them again while they
were asleep.

But misfortune had lost its hold on them and they were happy for the rest
of their lives.

A PARRICIDE

The lawyer had presented a plea of insanity. How could anyone explain
this strange crime otherwise?

One morning, in the grass near Chatou, two bodies had been found, a man
and a woman, well known, rich, no longer young and married since the
preceding year, the woman having been a widow for three years before.

They were not known to have enemies; they had not been robbed. They
seemed to have been thrown from the roadside into the river, after having
been struck, one after the other, with a long iron spike.

The investigation revealed nothing. The boatmen, who had been questioned,
knew nothing. The matter was about to be given up, when a young carpenter
from a neighboring village, Georges Louis, nicknamed "the Bourgeois,"
gave himself up.

To all questions he only answered this:

"I had known the man for two years, the woman for six months. They often
had me repair old furniture for them, because I am a clever workman."

And when he was asked:

"Why did you kill them?"

He would obstinately answer:

"I killed them because I wanted to kill them."

They could get nothing more out of him.

This man was undoubtedly an illegitimate child, put out to nurse and then
abandoned. He had no other name than Georges Louis, but as on growing up
he