grumbled to himself certain phrases of heavy irritation concerning “coming to the point,” and “a mere fencing-master,” and “cutting a figure.” But as the object of these vague menaces suddenly returned, whistling a march and beating time with his cane, the incident was without result.

In short, the group lived harmoniously together, and willingly permitted themselves to be presided over by the new-comer, whose white beard and martial bearing were quite impressive. And the small city, proud of so many things, was also proud of its retired Captain.

III.

Perfect happiness exists nowhere, and Captain Mercadier, who believed that he had found it at the Café Prosper, soon recovered from his illusion.

For one thing, on Mondays, the market-day, the Café Prosper was untenantable.

From early morning it was overrun with truck-peddlers, farmers, and poultrymen. Heavy men with coarse voices, red necks, and great whips in their hands, wearing blue blouses and otter-skin caps, bargaining over their cups, stamping their feet, striking their fists, familiar with the servant, and bungling at billiards.

When the Captain came, at eleven o’clock, for his first glass of absinthe, he found this crowd gathered, and already half-drunk, ordering a quantity of lunches. His usual place was taken, and he was served slowly and badly. The bell was continually sounding, and the proprietor and the waiter, with napkins under their arms, were running distractedly hither and thither. In short, it was an ill-omened day, which upset his entire existence.

Now, one Monday morning, when he was resting quietly at home, being sure that the café would be much too full and busy, the mild radiance of the autumn sun persuaded him to go down and sit upon the stone seat by the side of the house.

He was sitting there, depressed and smoking a damp cigar, when he saw coming down the end of the street—it was a badly paved lane leading out into the country—a little girl of eight or ten, driving before her a half-dozen geese.

As the Captain looked carelessly at the child he saw that she had a wooden leg.

There was nothing paternal in the heart of the soldier. It was that of a hardened bachelor. In former days, in the streets of Algiers, when the little begging Arabs pursued him with their importunate prayers, the Captain had often chased them away with blows from his whip; and on those rare occasions when he had penetrated the nomadic household of some comrade who was married and the father of a family, he had gone away cursing the crying babies and awkward children who had touched with their greasy hands the gilding on his uniform.

But the sight of that particular infirmity, which recalled to him the sad spectacle of wounds and amputations, touched, on that account, the old soldier. He felt almost a constriction of the heart at the sight of that sorry creature, half-clothed in her tattered petticoats and old chemise, bravely running along behind her geese, her bare foot in the dust, and limping on her ill-made wooden stump.

The geese, recognizing their home, turned into the poultry-yard, and the little one was about to follow them when the Captain stopped her with this question:

“Eh! little girl, what’s your name?”

“Pierette, monsieur, at your service,” she answered, looking at him with her great black eyes, and pushing her disordered locks from her forehead.

“You live in this house, then? I haven’t seen you before.”

“Yes, I know you pretty well, though, for I sleep under the stairs, and you wake me up every evening when you come home.”

“Is that so, my girl? Ah, well, I must walk on my toes in future. How old are you?”

“Nine, monsieur, come All-Saints day.”

“Is the landlady here a relative of yours?”

“No, monsieur, I am in service.”

“And they give you?”

“Soup, and a bed under the stairs.”

“And how came you to be lame like that, my poor little one?”

“By the kick of a cow when I was five.”

“Have you a father or mother?”

The child blushed under her sunburned skin. “I came from the Foundling Hospital,” she said, briefly. Then, with an awkward courtesy, she passed limping into the house, and the Captain heard, as she went away on the pavement of the court, the hard sound of the little wooden leg.

Good heavens! he thought, mechanically walking towards his café, that’s not at all the thing. A soldier, at least, they pack off to the Invalides, with the money from his medal to keep him in tobacco. For an officer, they fix up a collectorship, and he marries somewhere in the provinces. But this poor girl, with such an infirmity,—that’s not at all the thing!

Having established in these terms the injustice of fate, the Captain reached the threshold of his dear café, but he saw there such a mob of blue blouses, he heard such a din of laughter and click of billiard-balls, that he returned home in very bad humor.

His room—it was, perhaps, the first time that he had spent in it several hours of the day—looked rather shabby. His bed-curtains were the color of an old pipe. The fireplace was heaped with old cigar-stumps, and one could have written his name in the dust on the furniture. He contemplated for some time the walls where the sublime lancer of Leipsic rode a hundred times to a glorious death. Then, for an occupation, he passed his wardrobe in review. It was a lamentable series of bottomless pockets, socks full of holes, and shirts without buttons.

“I must have a servant,” he said.

Then he thought of the little lame girl.

“That’s what I’ll do. I’ll hire the next little room; winter is coming, and the little thing will freeze under the stairs. She will look after my clothes and my linen and keep the barracks clean. A valet, how’s that?”

But a cloud darkened the comfortable picture. The Captain remembered that quarter-day was still a long way off, and that his account at the Cafe Prosper was assuming alarming proportions.

“Not rich enough,” he said to himself. “And in the mean time they are robbing me down there. That is positive. The board is too high, and that wretch of a veterinary plays bezique much too well. I have paid his way now for eight days. Who knows? Perhaps I had better put the little one in charge of the mess, soup au café in the morning, stew at noon, and ragout every evening—campaign life, in fact. I know all about that. Quite the thing to try.”

Going out he saw at once the mistress of the house, a great brutal peasant, and the little lame girl, who both, with pitchforks in their hands, were turning over the dung-heap in the yard.

“Does she know how to sew, to wash, to make soup?” he asked, brusquely.

“Who—Pierette? Why?”

“Does she know a little of all that?”

“Of course. She came from an asylum where they learn how to take care of themselves.”

“Tell me, little one,” added the Captain, speaking to the child, “I am not scaring you—no? Well, my good woman, will you let me have her? I want a servant.”

“If you will support her.”

“Then that is finished. Here are twenty francs. Let her have to-night a dress and a shoe.