Putois | Page 2

discouraged.
"The truth will be clear to you presently, my daughter. Know then that Putois was born fully grown. I was still a child and your aunt was a little girl. We lived in a little house, in a suburb of Saint-Omer. Our parents led a peaceful, retired life, until they were discovered by an old lady named Madame Cornouiller, who lived at the manor of Montplaisir, twelve miles from town, and proved to be a great-aunt of my mother's. By right of relationship she insisted that our father and mother come to dine every Sunday at Montplaisir, where they were excessively bored. She said that it was the proper thing to have a family dinner on Sunday and that only people of common origin failed to observe this ancient custom. My father was bored to the point of tears at Montplaisir. His desperation was painful to contemplate. But Madame Cornouiller did not notice it. She saw nothing, My mother was braver. She suffered as much as my father, and perhaps more, but she smiled."
"Women are made to suffer," said Zoe.
"Zoe, every living thing is destined to suffer. In vain our parents refused these fatal invitations. Madame Cornouiller came to take them each Sunday afternoon. They had to go to Montplaisir; it was an obligation from which there was absolutely no escape. It was an established order that only a revolt could break. My father finally revolted and swore not to accept another invitation from Madame Cornouiller, leaving it to my mother to find decent pretexts and varied reasons for these refusals, for which she was the least capable. Our mother did not know how to pretend."
"Say, Lucien, that she did not like to. She could tell a fib as well as any one."
"It is true that when she had good reasons she gave them rather than invent poor ones. Do you recall, my sister, that one day she said at table: 'Fortunately, Zoe has the whooping-cough; we shall not have to go to Montplaisir for some time'?"
"That was true!" said Zoe.
"You got over it, Zoe. And one day Madame Cornouiller said to my mother: Dearest, I count on your coming with your husband to dine Sunday at Montplaisir.' Our mother, expressly bidden by her husband to give Madame Cornouiller a good reason for declining, invented, in this extremity, a reason that was not the truth. 'I am extremely sorry, dear Madame, but that will be impossible for us. Sunday I expect the gardener.'
"On hearing this, Madame Cornouiller looked through the glass door of the salon at the little wild garden, where the prickwood and the lilies looked as though they had never known the pruning-knife and were likely never to know it. 'You expect the gardener! What for?'
"'To work in the garden.'
"And my mother, having involuntarily turned her eyes on this little square of weeds and plants run wild, that she had called a garden, recognized with dismay the improbability of her excuse.
"'This man,' said Madame Cornouiller, 'could just as well work in your garden Monday or Tuesday. Moreover, that will be much better.' One should not work on Sunday.'
"'He works all the week.'
"I have often noticed that the most absurd and ridiculous reasons are the least disputed: they disconcert the adversary. Madame Cornouiller insisted, less than one might expect of a person so little disposed to give up. Rising from her armchair, she asked:
"'What do you call your gardener, dearest?'
"'Putois,' answered my mother without hesitation.
"Putois was named. From that time he existed. Madame Cornouiller took herself off, murmuring: 'Putois! It seems to me that I know that name. Putois! Putois! I must know him. But I do not recollect him. Where does he live?'
"'He works by the day. When one wants him one leaves word with this one or that one.'
"'Ah! I thought so, a loafer and a vagabond--a good-for-nothing. Don't trust him, dearest.'
"From that time Putois had a character.'"

II
Messieurs Goubin and Jean Marteau having arrived, Monsieur Bergeret put them in touch with the conversation.
"We were speaking of him whom my mother caused to be born gardener at Saint-Omer and whom she christened. He existed from that time on."
"Dear master, will you kindly repeat that?" said Monsieur Goubin, wiping the glass of his monocle.
"Willingly," replied Monsieur Bergeret. "There was no gardener. The gardener did not exist. My mother said: 'I am waiting for the gardener.' At once the gardener was. He lived."
"Dear master," said Monsieur Goubin, "how could he live since he did not exist?"
"He had a sort of existence," replied Monsieur Bergeret.
"You mean an imaginary existence," Monsieur Goubin replied, disdainfully.
"Is it nothing then, but an imaginary existence?" exclaimed the master. "And have not mythical beings the power to influence men! Consider mythology, Monsieur Goubin, and you will perceive that they are not real beings but imaginary beings that