ng?" Then she began
to sob, and amid her tears she continued: "That was the reason why I did
not want to marry you. I could not tell you, for you would have left me
without any bread for my child. You have never had any children, so you
cannot understand, you cannot understand!"

He said again, mechanically, with increasing surprise: "You have a child?
You have a child?"

"You took me by force, as I suppose you know? I did not want to marry
you," she said, still sobbing.

Then he got up, lit the candle, and began to walk up and down, with his
arms behind him. She was cowering on the bed and crying, and suddenly he
stopped in front of her, and said: "Then it is my fault that you have no
children?" She gave him no answer, and he began to walk up and down
again, and then, stopping again, he continued: "How old is your child?"
"Just six," she whispered. "Why did you not tell me about it?" he asked.
"How could I?" she replied, with a sigh.

He remained standing, motionless. "Come, get up," he said. She got up
with some difficulty, and then, when she was standing on the floor, he
suddenly began to laugh with the hearty laugh of his good days, and,
seeing how surprised she was, he added: "Very well, we will go and fetch
the child, as you and I can have none together."

She was so scared that if she had had the strength she would assuredly
have run away, but the farmer rubbed his hands and said: "I wanted to
adopt one, and now we have found one. I asked the cure about an orphan
some time ago."

Then, still laughing, he kissed his weeping and agitated wife on both
cheeks, and shouted out, as though she could not hear him: "Come along,
mother, we will go and see whether there is any soup left; I should not
mind a plateful."

She put on her petticoat and they went downstairs; and While she was
kneeling in front of the fireplace and lighting the fire under the
saucepan, he continued to walk up and down the kitchen with long strides,
repeating:

"Well, I am really glad of this; I am not saying it for form's sake, but
I am glad, I am really very glad."

THE WRECK

It was yesterday, the 31st of December.

I had just finished breakfast with my old friend Georges Garin when the
servant handed him a letter covered with seals and foreign stamps.

Georges said:

"Will you excuse me?"

"Certainly."

And so he began to read the letter, which was written in a large English
handwriting, crossed and recrossed in every