and
beside a kitchen range. He was always calling out, 'Come, some butter
--some eggs--some Madeira!' And it had to be brought to him at once in a
hurry, or he would get cross and say things that would make us blush all
over.

"When the day was over he would smoke a pipe outside the door. And as
I was passing by him with a pile of plates he said to me, like that:
'Come, girlie, come down to the water with me and show me the country.'
I went with him like a fool, and we had hardly got down to the bank of
the river when he took advantage of me so suddenly that I did not even
know what he was doing. And then he went away on the nine o'clock train.
I never saw him again."

"Is that all?" I asked.

She hesitated.

"Oh, I think Florentin belongs to him."

"Who is Florentin?"

"My little boy."

"Oh! Well, then, you made the boating man believe that he was the
father, did you not?"

"You bet!"

"Did he have any money, this boating man?"

"Yes, he left me an income of three hundred francs, settled on
Florentin."

I was beginning to be amused and resumed:

"All right, my girl, all right. You are all of you less stupid than one
would imagine, all the same. And how old is he now, Florentin?"

She replied:

"He is now twelve. He will make his first communion in the spring."

"That is splendid. And since then you have carried on your business
conscientiously?"

She sighed in a resigned manner.

"I must do what I can."

But a loud noise just then coming from the room itself made me start up
with a bound. It sounded like some one falling and picking themselves up
again by feeling along the wall with their hands.

I had seized the candle and was looking about me, terrified and furious.
She had risen also and was trying to hold me back to stop me, murmuring:

"That's nothing, my dear, I assure you it's nothing."

But I had discovered what direction the strange noise came from. I
walked straight towards a door hidden at the head of the bed and I
opened it abruptly and saw before me, trembling, his bright, terrified
eyes opened wide at sight of me, a little pale, thin boy seated beside a
large wicker chair off which he had fallen.

As soon as he saw me he began to cry. Stretching out his arms to his
mother, he cried:

"It was not my fault, mamma, it was not my fault. I was asleep, and I
fell off. Do not scold me, it was not my fault."

I turned to the woman and said:

"What does this mean?"

She seemed