Page:The Complete Short Stories of Guy de Maupassant.djvu/374

348 348 WORKS OF GUY DE MAUPASSANT "What could I say to that? "And if 1 should disclose a suspicion of the doubts which torture me, this creature would certainly turn rogue and exploit me, compromise me, ruin me. He would cry out to me 'Papa/ as in my dream. "And I tell myself that I have killed the mother and ruined this atrophied being, larva of the stable, hatched and bred of vileness, this man who, treated as others are, might have been like others. "And you will not understand the sensation strange, confused, and intol- erable, the fear I have in his presence, from thinking that this has come from me, that he belongs to me by that in- timate bond which binds father to son, that, thanks to the terrible lav;s of heredity, he is a part of me in a thou- sand things, by his blood and his hair and his flesh, and that he has the same germs of sickness and the same fer- ments of passion. "And I have ever an unappeasable need of seeing him, and the sight of him makes me suffer horribly; and from my window down there I look at him as he works in the dung-hill of the beasts, repeating to myself: That is my son!' "And I feel, sometimes, an intolerable desire to embrace him. But I have never even touched his sordid hand.'* The Academician was silent. And his companion, the political man, mur- mured: "Yes, indeed; we ought to occupy ourselves a little more with the children who have no father." Then a breath of wind traversing the great tree shook its berries, and envel- oped with a fine, odorous cloud the twc old men, who took long draughts of the sweet perfume. And the senator added: "It is good to be twenty-five years old, and it is even good to have children like that." A Way to Wealth "Do you know what has become of Leremy?" "He is captain of the Sixth Dragoons." "And Pinson?" "Subprefect." "And RacoUet-' "Dead." We hunted up other names which re- called to us young figures crowned with caps trimmed with gold braid. Later, ^e found some of these comrades,, bearded, bald, married, the fathers ot many children; and these meetings, these changes, gave us some disagreeable shivers, as they showed us how short life is, how quickly everything changes and passes away. My friend asked: "And Patience, the great Patience?" I roared. listen to me: Four or five weeks ago, as traveling inspector at Limoe^^, I
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