d very
cautiously, to avoid shocking them, that she belonged to the dusky race
of which they had only seen samples in pictures at Epinal. Then they
became restless, perplexed, alarmed, as if he had proposed a union with
the devil.

The mother said: "Black? How much of her is black? Is the whole of her?"

He replied: "Certainly. Everywhere, just as you are white everywhere."

The father interposed: "Black? Is it as black as the pot?"

The son answered: "Perhaps a little less than that. She is black, but
not disgustingly black. The cure's cassock is black, but it is not
uglier than a surplice which is white."

The father said: "Are there more black people besides her in her
country?"

And the son, with an air of conviction, exclaimed: "Certainly!"

But the old man shook his head.

"That must be unpleasant."

And the son:

"It isn't more disagreeable than anything else when you get accustomed
to it."

The mother asked:

"It doesn't soil the underwear more than other skins, this black skin?"

"Not more than your own, as it is her proper color."

Then, after many other questions, it was agreed that the parents should
see this girl before coming; to any decision, and that the young fellow,
whose term of military service would be over in a month, should bring
her to the house in order that they might examine her and decide by
talking the matter over whether or not she was too dark to enter the
Boitelle family.

Antoine accordingly announced that on Sunday, the 22d of May, the day of
his discharge, he would start for Tourteville with his sweetheart.

She had put on, for this journey to the house of her lover's parents,
her most beautiful and most gaudy clothes, in which yellow, red and blue
were the prevailing colors, so that she looked as if she were adorned
for a national festival.

At the terminus, as they were leaving Havre, people stared at her, and
Boitelle was proud of giving his arm to a person who commanded so much
attention. Then, in the third-class carriage, in which she took a seat
by his side, she aroused so much astonishment among the country folks
that the people in the adjoining compartments stood up on their benches
to look at her over the wooden partition which divides the compartments.
A child, at sight of her, began to cry with terror, another concealed
his face in his mother's apron. Everything went off well, however, up
to their arrival at their destination. But when the train slacken