Short Stories, vol 12 | Page 4

WOMAN'S SECRET A HUMBLE DRAMA MADEMOISELLE
COCOTTE THE CORSICAN BANDIT THE GRAVE

THE CHILD

Lemonnier had remained a widower with one child. He had loved his
wife devotedly, with a tender and exalted love, without a slip, during
their entire married life. He was a good, honest man, perfectly simple,
sincere, without suspicion or malice.
He fell in love with a poor neighbor, proposed and was accepted. He
was making a very comfortable living out of the wholesale cloth
business, and he did not for a minute suspect that the young girl might
have accepted him for anything else but himself.
She made him happy. She was everything to him; he only thought of
her, looked at her continually, with worshiping eyes. During meals he
would make any number of blunders, in order not to have to take his
eyes from the beloved face; he would pour the wine in his plate and the
water in the salt-cellar, then he would laugh like a child, repeating:
"You see, I love you too much; that makes me crazy."
She would smile with a calm and resigned look; then she would look
away, as though embarrassed by the adoration of her husband, and try
to make him talk about something else; but he would take her hand
under the table and he would hold it in his, whispering:
"My little Jeanne, my darling little Jeanne!"
She sometimes lost patience and said:
"Come, come, be reasonable; eat and let me eat."
He would sigh and break off a mouthful of bread, which he would then
chew slowly.
For five years they had no children. Then suddenly she announced to
him that this state of affairs would soon cease. He was wild with joy.
He no longer left her for a minute, until his old nurse, who had brought
him up and who often ruled the house, would push him out and close
the door behind him, in order to compel him to go out in the fresh air.
He had grown very intimate with a young man who had known his wife
since childhood, and who was one of the prefect's secretaries. M.
Duretour would dine three times a week with the Lemonniers, bringing
flowers to madame, and sometimes a box at the theater; and often, at
the end of the dinner, Lemonnier, growing tender, turning towards his
wife, would explain: "With a companion like you and a friend like him,
a man is completely happy on earth."
She died in childbirth. The shock almost killed him. But the sight of the
child, a poor, moaning little creature, gave him courage.

He loved it with a passionate and sorrowful love, with a morbid love in
which stuck the memory of death, but in which lived something of his
worship for the dead mother. It was the flesh of his wife, her being
continued, a sort of quintessence of herself. This child was her very life
transferred to another body; she had disappeared that it might exist, and
the father would smother it in with kisses. But also, this child had killed
her; he had stolen this beloved creature, his life was at the cost of hers.
And M. Lemonnier would place his son in the cradle and would sit
down and watch him. He would sit this way by the hour, looking at him,
dreaming of thousands of things, sweet or sad. Then, when the little
one was asleep, he would bend over him and sob.
The child grew. The father could no longer spend an hour away from
him; he would stay near him, take him out for walks, and himself dress
him, wash him, make him eat. His friend, M. Duretour, also seemed to
love the boy; he would kiss him wildly, in those frenzies of tenderness
which are characteristic of parents. He would toss him in his arms, he
would trot him on his knees, by the hour, and M. Lemonnier, delighted,
would mutter:
"Isn't he a darling? Isn't he a darling?"
And M. Duretour would hug the child in his arms and tickle his neck
with his mustache.
Celeste, the old nurse, alone, seemed to have no tenderness for the little
one. She would grow angry at his pranks, and seemed impatient at the
caresses of the two men. She would exclaim:
"How can you expect to bring a child up like that? You'll make a
perfect monkey out of him."
Years went by, and Jean was nine years old. He hardly knew how to
read; he had been so spoiled, and only did as he saw fit. He was willful,
stubborn and quick-tempered. The father always gave in to him and let
him have his own way. M. Duretour would always buy him all the toys
he wished, and