The Little One
Monsieur Lemonnier had remained a widower with one child. He had loved his wife madly, with a noble and tender love, that never failed, throughout the whole of their life together. He was a good, honest fellow, simple, very simple in fact, free from diffidence and malice.
Having fallen in love with a poor neighbour, he asked for her hand and married her. He was in a fairly prosperous drapery business, was making quite a good amount of money, and did not for one moment imagine that the girl might not have accepted him for himself alone.
At all events she made him happy. He had no eyes for anybody or anything but her, thought only of her, and looked at her continually in an abandon of adoration. During meals he would commit a thousand blunders rather than look away from the beloved face; he would pour the wine into his plate and the water into the saltcellar, and then would burst out laughing like a child, declaring:
“There, you see I love you too much; it makes me do such a lot of silly things.”
And she would smile, with an air of calm resignation, and then would turn away her eyes, as though embarrassed by her husband’s worship, and would try to make him talk, to chat on any subject; but he would reach across the table and take her hand, and, holding it in his, would murmur:
“My little Jeanne, my dear little Jeanne.”
She would end by growing vexed and exclaiming:
“Oh, do be reasonable; get on with your dinner, and let me get on with mine!”
He would utter a sigh and break off a mouthful of bread, which he would proceed slowly to munch.
For five years they had no children. Then suddenly she found herself with child. It was a delirious happiness for them. He would never leave her during the whole of her pregnancy; to such an extent, in fact, that her maid, an old nurse who had brought her up and was given to speaking her mind to them, would sometimes thrust him out of the house and lock the door, so as to force him to take the air.
He had formed an intimate friendship with a young man who had known his wife since her childhood, and who was second head clerk at the Prefecture. Monsieur Duretour dined three times a week at the Lemonniers’, brought flowers for Madame and sometimes a box at the theatre; and often, during dessert, the kind, affectionate Lemonnier would turn to his wife and exclaim:
“With a comrade like you and a friend like him, one is perfectly happy on earth.”
She died in childbed. He nearly died too. But the sight of the child gave him courage: a little shrivelled creature that moaned.
He loved the baby with a passionate and grief-stricken love, a morbid love, wherein remained the remembrance of death, but wherein survived something of his adoration of the dead woman. The boy was his wife’s flesh, her continued being, a quintessence of her, as it were. He was her very life poured into another body; she had disappeared that he might exist. … And the father embraced him frantically. …
But also the child had killed her, had taken, stolen that adored existence, had fed upon it, had drunk up her share of life. … And Monsieur Lemonnier replaced his son in the cradle and sat down beside him to contemplate him. He remained there for hours and hours, watching him, musing of a thousand sad or sweet things. Then, as the child was sleeping, he stooped over his face and wept into his coverings.
The child grew. The father could not forgo his presence for an hour; he would prowl about the nursery, take him out for walks, put on his clothes, wash him, give him his meals. His friend, Monsieur Duretour, also seemed to cherish the baby, and would embrace him with rapture, with those frenzies of affection which are a parent’s property. He would make him leap in his arms or ride a cockhorse for hours upon his leg, and suddenly, overturning him upon his knees, would raise his short frock and kiss the brat’s fat thighs and round little calves.
“Isn’t he a darling, isn’t he a darling!” would murmur Monsieur Lemonnier in delight, and Monsieur Duretour would clasp the child in his arms, tickling his neck with his moustache.
Only Céleste, the old nurse, seemed to have no affection for the little one. She was vexed at his pranks, and seemed exasperated by the cajolery of the two men.
“Is that any way to bring up a child?” she would exclaim. “You’ll make a perfect monkey of him.”
More years went by, and Jean attained the age of nine. He could scarcely read, he had been so spoilt, and he always did exactly as he liked. He had a stubborn will, a habit of obstinate resistance, and a violent temper. The father always gave way and granted him everything. Monsieur Duretour was perpetually buying and bringing for the little one the toys he coveted, and fed him on cakes and sweets.
On these occasions Céleste would lose her temper, and exclaim:
“It’s a shame, monsieur, a shame. You’ll be the ruin of the child, the ruin of him, do you hear! But it’s got to be stopped, and stopped it shall be, yes, I promise it shall, and before long, too.”
“Well, what about it, my good woman?” Monsieur Lemonnier would answer with a smile. “I’m too fond of him, I can’t go against his will. It’s up to you to take your share in his upbringing.”
Jean was weak and somewhat ailing. The doctor declared him to be anaemic, and ordered iron, red meat, and strong broth.
But the little one liked nothing but cakes, and refused all other nourishment; and his father, in despair, stuffed him with cream tarts and chocolate éclairs.
One evening, as the two sat down to table alone together, Céleste brought in the soup tureen with an assurance and an air of authority unusual in her. She abruptly took off the lid, plunged the ladle into the middle of it, and announced:
“There’s broth such as I’ve never made before; the little one really must have some, this time.”
Monsieur Lemonnier, terrified, lowered his head. He saw that this was not going down well.
Céleste took his plate, filled it herself, and placed it back in front of him.
He immediately tasted the soup and declared:
“Yes, it is excellent.”
Then the servant took the little boy’s plate and poured into it a whole ladleful of soup. She retired two paces and waited.
Jean sniffed it, pushed away the plate, and uttered a “pah” of disgust. Céleste, grown pale, went swiftly up to him and, seizing the spoon full of soup, thrust it forcibly into the child’s half-open mouth.
He choked, coughed, sneezed, and spat, and, yelling, grasped his glass in his fist and flung it at his nurse. It caught her full in the stomach. At that, exasperated, she took the brat’s head under her arm and began to ram spoonful after spoonful of soup down his gullet. He steadily vomited them back, stamping his feet with rage, writhing, choking, and beating the air with his hands, as red as though he were dying of suffocation.
At first the father remained in such stupefaction that he made no movement at all. Then suddenly he rushed forward with the wild rage of a madman, took the servant by the throat, and flung her against the wall.
“Get out! … out! … out! … brute!” he stammered.
But with a vigorous shake she repulsed him, and with dishevelled hair, her cap hanging down her back, her eyes blazing, cried:
“What’s come over you now? You want to beat me because I make the child eat his soup, when you’ll kill him with your spoiling!”
“Out! … be off with you … off with you, brute!” he repeated, trembling from head to foot.
Then in a rage she turned upon him, and facing him eye to eye, said in a trembling voice:
“Ah! … You think … you think … you’re going to treat me like that, me, me? … No, never. … And for whose sake, for whose sake? … For that snotty brat who isn’t even your own child! No … not yours! … No! not yours! … not yours! … not yours! Why, everybody knows it, by God, except you. … Ask the grocer, the butcher, the baker, everyone, everyone. …”
She faltered, choked with anger, then was silent and looked at him.
He did not stir; livid, his arms waving wildly. At the end of several seconds he stammered in a feeble, tremulous voice, in which strong emotion still quivered:
“You say? … you say? … What do you say?”
Then she answered in a calmer voice: “I say what I know, by God! What everyone knows.”
He raised his two hands and, flinging himself upon her with the fury of a brute beast, tried to fell her to the ground. But she was strong, in spite of her age, and agile too. She slipped through his arms and, running round the table, once more in a violent rage, screeched:
“Look at him, look at him, you fool, and see if he isn’t the living image of Monsieur Duretour; look at his nose and eyes, are your eyes like that? Or your nose? Or your hair? And were hers like that? I tell you everybody knows it, everybody, except you! It’s the laughingstock of the town! Look at him! Look at him! …”
She passed in front of the door, opened it, and disappeared.
Jean, terrified, remained motionless, staring at his soup plate.
At the end of an hour she returned, very softly, to see. The little one, after having devoured the cakes, a dish of custard, and a dish of pears in syrup, was now eating jam out of a pot with his soup spoon.
The father had gone out.
Céleste took the child, embraced him, and, with silent steps, carried him off to his room and put him to bed. And she returned to the dining room, cleared the table, and set everything in order, very uneasy in her mind.
No sound whatever was to be heard in the house. She went and set her ear to her master’s door. He was not moving about the room. She set her eye to the keyhole. He was writing and seemed calm.
Then she went back to sit in her kitchen, so as to be ready for any circumstance, for she realised that something was in the air.
She fell asleep in her chair, and did not wake until daybreak.
She did the household work, as was her custom every morning; she swept and dusted, and, at about eight o’clock, made Monsieur Lemonnier’s coffee.
But she dared not take it to her master, having very little idea how she would be received; and she waited for him to ring. He did not ring. Nine o’clock went by, then ten o’clock.
Céleste, alarmed, prepared the tray, and started off with a beating heart. In front of the door she stopped and listened. Nothing was stirring. She knocked, there was no answer. So, summoning up all her courage, she opened the door and went in; then, uttering a terrible shriek, she dropped the breakfast tray which she held in her hands.
Monsieur Lemonnier was hanging right in the middle of his room, suspended by the neck from a ring in the ceiling. His tongue protruded in ghastly fashion. The slipper had fallen off his right foot and lay on the floor; the other slipper had remained upon the foot. An overturned chair had rolled to the bedside.
Céleste, at her wit’s end, fled shrieking. All the neighbours ran up. The doctor discovered that death had taken place at midnight.
A letter, addressed to Monsieur Duretour, was found upon the suicide’s table. It contained this solitary line:
“I leave and entrust the little one to you.”