"Just look!" Simon whispered. The grandfather did not like the
soup, and refused to eat it; but he was made to, on account of

his health. The footman forced the spoon into his mouth, while
the old man blew energetically, so as not to swallow the soup,

which was thus scattered like a stream of water on to the table
and over his neighbors. The children shook with delight at the

spectacle, while their father, who was also amused, said: "Isn't
the old man funny?"

During the whole meal they were all taken up solely with him.
With his eyes he devoured the dishes which were put on the table,

and with trembling hands tried to seize them and pull them to
him. They put them almost within his reach to see his useless

efforts. his trembling clutches at them, the piteous appeal of
his whole nature, of his eyes, of his mouth, and of his nose as

he smelled them. He slobbered on to his table napkin with
eagerness, while uttering inarticulate grunts, and the whole

family was highly amused at this horrible and grotesque scene.
Then they put a tiny morsel on to his plate, which he ate with

feverish gluttony, in order to get something more as soon as
possible. When the rice-cream was brought in, he nearly had a

fit, and groaned with greediness. Gontran called out to him: "You
have eaten too much already; you will have no more." And they

pretended not to give him any. Then he began to cry--cry and
tremble more violently than ever, while all the children laughed.

At last, however, they gave him his helping, a very small piece.
As he ate the first mouthful of the pudding, he made a comical

and greedy noise in his throat, and a movement with his neck like
ducks do, when they swallow too large a morsel, and then, when he

had done, he began to stamp his feet, so as to get more.
I was seized with pity for this pitiable and ridiculous Tantalus,

and interposed on his behalf: "Please, will you not give him a
little more rice?"

But Simon replied: "Oh! no my dear fellow, if he were to eat too
much, it might harm him at his age."

I held my tongue, and thought over these words. Oh! ethics! Oh!
logic! Oh! wisdom! At his age! So they deprived him of his only

remaining pleasure out of regard for his health! His health! What
would he do with it, inert and trembling wreck that he was? They

were taking care of his life, so they said. His life? How many
days? Ten, twenty, fifty, or a hundred? Why? For his own sake? Or

to preserve for some time longer, the spectacle of his impotent
greediness in the family.

There was nothing left for him to do in this life, nothing
whatever. He had one single wish left, one sole pleasure; why not

grant him that last solaceconstantly, until he died?
After playing cards for a long time, I went up to my room and to

bed: I was low-spirited and sad, sad, sad! I sat at my window,
but I heard nothing but the beautiful warbling of a bird in a

tree, somewhere in the distance. No doubt the bird was singing
thus in a low voice during the night, to lull his mate, who was

sleeping on her eggs.
And I thought of my poor friend's five children, and to myself

pictured him snoring by the side of his ugly wife,
BELLFLOWER[1]

[1] Clochette.
How strange are those old recollections which haunt us, without

our being able to get rid of them!
This one is so very old that I cannot understand how it has clung

so vividly and tenaciously to my memory. Since then I have seen
so many sinister things, either affecting or terrible, that I am

astonished at not being able to pass a single day without the
face of Mother Bellflower recurring to my mind's eye, just as I

knew her formerly, long, long ago, when I was ten or twelve years
old.

She was an old seamstress who came to my parents' house once a
week, every Thursday, to mend the linen. My parents lived in one

of those country houses called chateaux, which are merely old
houses with pointed roofs, to which are attached three or four

adjacent farms.
The village, a large village, almost a small market town, was a

few hundred yards off, and nestled round the church, a red brick
church, which had become black with age.

Well, every Thursday Mother Bellflower came between half past six
and seven in the morning, and went immediately into the

linen-room and began to work. She was a tall, thin, bearded or
rather hairy woman, for she had a beard all over her face, a

surprising, an unexpected beard, growing in improbable tufts, in
curly bunches which looked as if they had been sown by a madman

over that great face, the face of a gendarme in petticoats. She
had them on her nose, under her nose, round her nose, on her

chin, on her cheeks; and her eyebrows, which were extraordinarily
thick and long, and quite gray, bushy and bristling, looked

exactly like a pair of mustaches stuck on there by mistake.
She limped, but not like lame people generally do, but like a

ship pitching. When she planted her great, bony, vibrant body on
her sound leg, she seemed to be preparing to mount some enormous

wave, and then suddenly she dipped as if to disappear in an
abyss, and buried herself in the ground. Her walk reminded one of

a ship in a storm, and her head, which was always covered with an
enormous white cap, whose ribbons fluttered down her back, seemed

to traverse the horizon from North to South and from South to
North, at each limp.

I adored Mother Bellflower. As soon as I was up I used to go into
the linen-room, where I found her installed at work, with a

foot-warmer under her feet. As soon as I arrived, she made me
take the foot-warmer and sit upon it, so that I might not catch

cold in that large, chilly room under the roof.
"That draws the blood from your head," she would say to me.

She told me stories, while mending the linen with her long,
crooked, nimble fingers; behind her magnifying spectacles, for

age had impaired her sight, her eyes appeared enormous to me,
strangely profound, double.

As far as I can remember from the things which she told me and by
which my childish heart was moved, she had the large heart of a

poor woman. She told me what had happened in the village, how a
cow had escaped from the cowhouse and had been found the next

morning in front of Prosper Malet's mill, looking at the sails
turning, or about a hen's egg which had been found in the church

belfry without anyone being able to understand what creature had
been there to lay it, or the queer story of Jean Pila's dog, who

had gone ten leagues to bring back his master's breeches which a
tramp had stolen while they were hanging up to dry out of doors,

after he had been caught in the rain. She told me these simple
adventures in such a manner that in my mind they assumed the

proportions of never-to-be-forgotten dramas, of grand and
mysterious poems; and the ingenious stories invented by the

poets, which my mother told me in the evening, had none of the
flavor, none of the fullness or of the vigor of the peasant

woman's narratives.
Well, one Thursday when I had spent all the morning in listening

to Mother Clochette, I wanted to go upstairs to her again during
the day, after picking hazelnuts with the manservant in the wood

behind the farm. I remember it all as clearly as what happened
only yesterday.

On opening the door of the linen-room, I saw the old seamstress