e track of the culprit. She tried again to obtain
from Gudule a complete confession. 'In your own interest, Gudule, tell
me who it is.' Gudule remained mute. All at once a ray of light flashed
through the mind of Madame Cornouiller: 'It is Putois!' The cook cried,
but did not answer. 'It is Putois! Why did I not guess it sooner? It
is Putois! Miserable! miserable! miserable!' and Madame Cornouiller
remained convinced that it was Putois. Everybody at Saint-Omer, from the
judge to the lamplighter's dog, knew Gudule and her basket At the news
that Putois had betrayed Gudule, the town was filled with surprise,
wonder, and merriment....

With this reputation in the town and its environs he remained attached
to our house by a thousand subtle ties. He passed before our door, and
it was believed that he sometimes climbed the wall of our garden. He was
never seen face to face. At any moment we would recognize his shadow,
his voice, his footsteps. More than once we thought we saw his back in
the twilight, at the corner of a road. To my sister and me he gradually
changed in character. He remained mischievous and malevolent, but he
became childlike and very ingenuous. He became less real and, I
dare say, more poetical. He entered in the artless Cycle of childish
traditions. He became more like Croquemitaine,* like Pere Fouettard, or
the sand man who closes the children's eyes when evening comes.

*The national "bugaboo" or "bogy man."

It was not that imp that tangled the colts' tails at night in the
stable. Less rustic and less charming, but equally and frankly roguish,
he made ink mustaches on my sister's dolls. In our bed, before going to
sleep, we listened; he cried on the roofs with the cats, he howled with
the dogs, he filled the mill hopper with groans, and imitated the songs
of belated drunkards in the streets. What made Putois ever-present and
familiar to us, what interested us in him, was that the remembrance of
him was associated with all the objects about us. Zoe's dolls, my school
books, in which he had many times rumpled and besmeared the pages; the
garden wall, over which we had seen his red eyes gleam in the shadow;
the blue porcelain jar that he cracked one winter's night, unless it
was the frost; the trees, the streets, the benches--everything recalled
Putois, the children's Putois, a local and mythical being. He did not
equal in grace and poetry the dullest satyr, the stoutest fawn of
Sicily or Thessaly. B