Page:The Complete Short Stories of Guy de Maupassant.djvu/150

128 us, and was evidently pleased at that minute inspection. He was a charming man, and the owner of a large forest, where he had given me permission to shoot, and I was of course obliged to pretend to be interested in his grandmothers philanthropic work. So with a smile on my lips, I endured the superintendent's interminable discourse, punctuating it here and there, as best as I could by:

"Ah! really! Very strange indeed! I should never have believed it!"

I was absolutely ignorant of the remark to which I replied thus, for my thoughts were lulled to repose by the constant humming of our locuacious guide. I was vaguely conscious that the persons and things might have appeared worthy of attention to me, if I had been there alone as an idler, for in that case, I should certainly have asked the superintendent: "What is this Babette, whose name appears so constantly in the complaints of so many of the inmates."

Quite a dozen men and women had spoken to us about her, now to complain of her, now to praise her; and especially the women, as soon as they saw the superintendent, cried out:

"M'sieur, Babette has again been—"

"There! that will do, that will do!" he interrupted them, his gentle voice suddenly becoming harsh.

At other times he would amicably question some old man with a happy countenance, and say:

"Well, my friend! I suppose you are very happy here?"

Many replied with fervent expressions of gratitude, with which Babette's name was frequently mingled. When he heard them speak so, the superintendent put on an ecstatic air, looked up to heaven with clasped hands, and said, slowly shaking his head: "Ah! Babette is a very precious woman, very precious!"

Yes, it would certainly interest one to know who that creature was, but not under present circumstances, and so, rather than to undergo any more of this, I made up my mind to remain in ignorance of who Babette was, for I could pretty well guess what she would be like. I pictured her to myself as a flower that had sprung up in a corner of these dull courtyards, like a ray of sun shining through the sepulchral gloom of these dismal passages.

I pictured her so clearly to myself, that I did not even feel any wish to know her. Yet she was dear to me, because of the happy expression which they all put on when they spoke of her, and I was angry with the old women who spoke against her. One thing, certainly, puzzled me, and that was, that the superintendent was among those who went into ecstasies over her, and this made me strongly disinclined to question him about her, though I had no other reason for the feeling.

But all this passed through my mind in rather a confused manner, without my taking the trouble to fix or to formulate any ideas or explanations. I continued to dream rather than to think effectively, and it is very probable that, when my visit was over, I should not have remembered much about it, not even with regard to Babette, if I had not been suddenly awakened by the sight of her in the flesh, and been quite upset by the difference that there was between my fancy and the reality.

We had just crossed a small back