Then the workman became serious. He had recognized La Blanchotte's son, and although a recent arrival to 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. She will give you a papa."
And so they started on the way, the big one holding the little one by the hand. The man smiled afresh, for he was not sorry to see this Blanchotte, who by popular report was one of the prettiest girls in the country-side—and, perhaps, he said to himself, at the bottom of his heart, that a lass who had erred once 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 at once perceived that there was no more 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: