The Celebrated Short Stories of Guy de Maupassant: 100+ Classic Tales in One Edition. Guy de Maupassant

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СКАЧАТЬ intervals, as in a tempest intervals of calm alternate suddenly with tremendous gusts of wind, which snap off the trees and then lose themselves in the horizon, this thought would return to him with intense pain:

      “I am going to drown myself because I have no papa.”

      It was very warm, fine weather. The pleasant sunshine warmed the grass. The water shone like a mirror. And Simon enjoyed some minutes of happiness, of that languor which follows weeping, and felt inclined to fall asleep there upon the grass in the warm sunshine.

      A little green frog leaped from under his feet. He endeavored to catch it. It escaped him. He followed it and lost it three times in succession. At last he caught it by one of its hind legs and began to laugh as he saw the efforts the creature made to escape. It gathered itself up on its hind legs and then with a violent spring suddenly stretched them out as stiff as two bars; while it beat the air with its front legs as though they were hands, its round eyes staring in their circle of yellow. It reminded him of a toy made of straight slips of wood nailed zigzag one on the other; which by a similar movement regulated the movements of the little soldiers fastened thereon. Then he thought of his home, and then of his mother, and, overcome by sorrow, he again began to weep. A shiver passed over him. He knelt down and said his prayers as before going to bed. But he was unable to finish them, for tumultuous, violent sobs shook his whole frame. He no longer thought, he no longer saw anything around him, and was wholly absorbed in crying.

      Suddenly a heavy hand was placed upon his shoulder, and a rough voice asked him:

      “What is it that causes you so much grief, my little man?”

      Simon turned round. A tall workman with a beard and black curly hair was staring at him good-naturedly. He answered with his eyes and throat full of tears:

      “They beat me — because — I — I have no — papa — no papa.”

      “What!” said the man, smiling; “why, everybody has one.”

      The child answered painfully amid his spasms of grief:

      “But I — I — I have none.”

      Then the workman became serious. He had recognized La Blanchotte’s son, and, although himself a new arrival in the neighborhood, he had a vague idea of her history.

      “Well,” said he, “console yourself, my boy, and come with me home to your mother. They will give you — a papa.”

      And so they started on the way, the big fellow holding the little fellow by the hand, and the man smiled, for he was not sorry to see this Blanchotte, who was, it was said, one of the prettiest girls of the countryside, and, perhaps, he was saying to himself, at the bottom of his heart, that a lass who had erred might very well err again.

      They arrived in front of a very neat little white house.

      “There it is,” exclaimed the child, and he cried, “Mamma!”

      A woman appeared, and the workman instantly left off smiling, for he saw at once that there was no fooling to be done with the tall pale girl who stood austerely at her door as though to defend from one man the threshold of that house where she had already been betrayed by another. Intimidated, his cap in his hand, he stammered out:

      “See, madame, I have brought you back your little boy who had lost himself near the river.”

      But Simon flung his arms about his mother’s neck and told her, as he again began to cry:

      “No, mamma, I wished to drown myself, because the others had beaten me — had beaten me — because I have no papa.”

      A burning redness covered the young woman’s cheeks; and, hurt to the quick, she embraced her child passionately, while the tears coursed down her face. The man, much moved, stood there, not knowing how to get away.

      But Simon suddenly ran to him and said:

      “Will you be my papa?”

      A deep silence ensued. La Blanchotte, dumb and tortured with shame, leaned herself against the wall, both her hands upon her heart. The child, seeing that no answer was made him, replied:

      “If you will not, I shall go back and drown myself.”

      The workman took the matter as a jest and answered, laughing:

      “Why, yes, certainly I will.”

      “What is your name,” went on the child, “so that I may tell the others when they wish to know your name?”

      “Philip,” answered the man:

      Simon was silent a moment so that he might get the name well into his head; then he stretched out his arms, quite consoled, as he said:

      “Well, then, Philip, you are my papa.”

      The workman, lifting him from the ground, kissed him hastily on both cheeks, and then walked away very quickly with great strides. When the child returned to school next day he was received with a spiteful laugh, and at the end of school, when the lads were on the point of recommencing, Simon threw these words at their heads as he would have done a stone: “He is named Philip, my papa.”

      Yells of delight burst out from all sides.

      “Philip who? Philip what? What on earth is Philip? Where did you pick up your Philip?”

      Simon answered nothing; and, immovable in his faith, he defied them with his eye, ready to be martyred rather than fly before them. The school master came to his rescue and he returned home to his mother.

      During three months, the tall workman, Philip, frequently passed by La Blanchotte’s house, and sometimes he made bold to speak to her when he saw her sewing near the window. She answered him civilly, always sedately, never joking with him, nor permitting him to enter her house. Notwithstanding, being, like all men, a bit of a coxcomb, he imagined that she was often rosier than usual when she chatted with him.

      But a lost reputation is so difficult to regain and always remains so fragile that, in spite of the shy reserve of La Blanchotte, they already gossiped in the neighborhood.

      As for Simon he loved his new papa very much, and walked with him nearly every evening when the day’s work was done. He went regularly to school, and mixed with great dignity with his schoolfellows without ever answering them back.

      One day, however, the lad who had first attacked him said to him:

      “You have lied. You have not a papa named Philip.”

      “Why do you say that?” demanded Simon, much disturbed.

      The youth rubbed his hands. He replied:

      “Because if you had one he would be your mamma’s husband.”

      Simon was confused by the truth of this reasoning; nevertheless, he retorted:

      “He is my papa, all the same.”

      “That can very well be,” exclaimed the urchin with a sneer, “but that is not being your papa altogether.”

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