so unexpected and
queer did the thing appear to me.

"I asked:

"'Who is this gentleman?'

"She replied:

"'Tis my father, whom I did not know. Mamma left it to me, telling me to
keep it, as it might be useful to me, perhaps, one day--'

"She hesitated, began to laugh, and went on:

"'I don't know in what way, upon my word. I don't think he'll care to
acknowledge me.'

"My heart went beating wildly, like the mad gallop of a runaway horse. I
replaced the portrait, laying it down flat on the mantelpiece. On top of
it I placed, without even knowing what I was doing, two notes for a
hundred francs, which I had in my pocket, and I rushed away, exclaiming:

"'We'll meet again soon--by-bye, darling--by-bye.'

"I heard her answering:

"'Till Tuesday.'

"I was on the dark staircase, which I descended, groping my way down.

"When I got into the open air, I saw that it was raining, and I started
at a great pace down some street or other.

"I walked straight on, stupefied, distracted, trying to jog my memory!
Was this possible? Yes. I remembered all of a sudden a girl who had
written to me, about a month after our rupture, that she was going
to have a child by me. I had torn or burned the letter, and had forgotten
all about the matter. I should have looked at the woman's photograph over
the girl's mantelpiece. But would I have recognized it? It was the
photograph of an old woman, it seemed to me.

"I reached the quay. I saw a bench, and sat down on it. It went on
raining. People passed from time to time under umbrellas. Life appeared
to me odious and revolting, full of miseries, of shames, of infamies
deliberate or unconscious. My daughter!... I had just perhaps possessed
my own daughter! And Paris, this vast Paris, somber, mournful, dirty,
sad, black, with all those houses shut up, was full of such things,
adulteries, incests, violated children, I recalled to mind what I had
been told about bridges haunted by the infamous votaries of vice.

"I had acted, without wishing it, without being aware of it, in a worse
fashion than these ignoble beings. I had entered my own daughter's bed!

"I was on the point of throwing myself into the water. I was mad! I
wandered about till dawn, then I came back to my own house to think.

"I thereupon did what appeared to me the wisest thing. I desired a notary
to send for this little girl, and to ask her under what conditions her
mother had given her the portrait of him whom she