d long-enduring happiness, in the arms of
a good, tender and faithful woman; he had seen all that in the
transparent looks of that school girl with light hair.

He had not dreamt of the fact that an active, living and vibrating man
grows tired as soon as he has comprehended the stupid reality, unless
indeed, he becomes so brutalized that he understands nothing more
whatever.

What would he be like when I met him again? Still lively, witty, light
hearted and enthusiastic, or in a state of mental torpor through
provincial life? A man can change a great deal in the course of fifteen
years!

* * * * *

The train stopped at a small station, and as I got out of the carriage,
a stout, a very stout man with red cheeks and a big stomach rushed up to
me with open arms, exclaiming: "George!" I embraced him, but I had not
recognized him, and then I said, in astonishment: "By Jove! You have not
grown thin!" And he replied with a laugh: "What did you expect? Good
living, a good table and good nights! Eating and sleeping, that is my
existence!"

I looked at him closely, trying to find the features I held so dear in
that broad face. His eyes alone had not altered, but I no longer saw the
same looks in them, and I said to myself: "If the looks be the
reflection of the mind, the thoughts in that head are not what they used
to be formerly; those thoughts which I knew so well."

Yet his eyes were bright, full of pleasure and friendship, but they had
not that clear, intelligent expression, which expresses as much as words
do, the value of the mind. Suddenly he said to me: "Here are my two
eldest children." A girl of fourteen, who was almost a woman, and a boy
of thirteen, in the dress of a boy from a _Lycee_, came forward in a
hesitating and awkward manner, and I said in a low voice: "Are they
yours?" "Of course they are," he replied laughing. "How many have you?"
"Five! There are three more indoors."

He said that in a proud, self-satisfied, almost triumphant manner, and I
felt profound pity, mingled with a feeling of vague contempt for this
vainglorious and simple reproducer of his species, who spent his nights
in his country house in making children.

I got into a carriage, which he drove himself, and we set off through
the town, a dull, sleepy, gloomy town, where nothing was moving in the
streets except a few dogs and two or three maidservants. Here and there
a shopkeeper standing at his door too