as a present, while her husband drew up a paper. And the
young woman, radiant, carried off the howling brat, as one carries away
a wished-for knick-knack from a shop.

The Tuvaches, from their door, watched her departure, silent, serious,
perhaps regretting their refusal.

Nothing more was heard of little Jean Vallin. The parents went to the
lawyer every month to collect their hundred and twenty francs. They had
quarrelled with their neighbors, because Mother Tuvache grossly
insulted them, continually, repeating from door to door that one must
be 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 an