outh and incoherent though they were,
something of unity.

"During the holidays that followed our walk to the Mont St. Michel, Le
Mansel invited me to spend a day at the home of his parents, who were
farmers and landowners at Saint Julien.

"My mother consented with some repugnance. Saint Julien is six
kilometres from the town. Having put on a white waistcoat and a smart
blue tie I started on my way there early one Sunday morning.

"Alexandre stood at the door waiting for me and smiling like a little
child. He took me by the hand and led me into the 'parlour.' The house,
half country, half town-like, was neither poor nor ill furnished. And
yet my heart was deeply oppressed when I entered, so great was the
silence and sadness that reigned.

"Near the window, whose curtains were slightly raised as if to satisfy
some timid curiosity, I saw a woman who seemed old, though I cannot be
sure that she was as old as she appeared to be. She was thin and yellow,
and her eyes, under their red lids glowed in their black sockets. Though
it was summer her body and her head were shrouded in some black woollen
material. But that which made her look most ghastly was a band of metal
which encircled her forehead like a diadem.

"'This is mama,' Le Mansel said to me, 'she has a headache.'

"Madam Le Mansel greeted me in a plaintive voice, and doubtless
observing my astonished glance at her forehead, said, smiling:

"'What I wear on my forehead, young sir, is not a crown; it is a
magnetic band to cure my headache.' I did my best to reply when Le
Mansel dragged me away to the garden, where we found a bald little man
who flitted along the paths like a ghost. He was so thin and so light
that there seemed some danger of his being blown away by the wind. His
timid manner and lus long and lean neck, when he bent forward, and his
head, no larger than a man's fist, his shy side-glances and his
skipping gait, his short arms uplifted like a pair of flippers, gave him
undeniably a great resemblance to a plucked chicken.

"My friend, Le Mansel, explained that this was his father, but that they
were obliged to let him stay in the yard as he really only lived in the
company of his chickens, and he had in their society quite forgotten to
talk to human beings. As he spoke his father suddenly disappeared, and
very soon an ecstatic clucking filled the air. He was with his chickens.

"Le Mansel and I strolled several times around the garden and he told