“I found my parents looking as usual. My mother alone spoke to me “'How you frightened me, you naughty boy. I lay awake the whole night.'
“I did not answer, but began to weep. My father did not utter a single word.
“Eight days later I returned to school.
“Well, my friend, it was all over with me. I had witnessed the other side of things, the bad side. I have not been able to perceive the good side since that day. What has taken place in my mind, what strange phenomenon has warped my ideas, I do not know. But I no longer had a taste for anything, a wish for anything, a love for anybody, a desire for anything whatever, any ambition, or any hope. And I always see my poor mother on the ground, in the park, my father beating her. My mother died some years later; my, father still lives. I have not seen him since. Waiter, a 'bock.'”
A waiter brought him his “bock,” which he swallowed at a gulp. But, in taking up his pipe again, trembling as he was, he broke it. “Confound it!” he said, with a gesture of annoyance. “That is a real sorrow. It will take me a month to color another!”
And he called out across the vast hall, now reeking with smoke and full of men drinking, his everlasting: “Garcon, un 'bock'—and a new pipe.”
AFTER
“My darlings,” said the comtesse, “you might go to bed.”
The three children, two girls and a boy, rose and kissed their grandmother. Then they said good-night to M. le Cure, who had dined at the chateau, as was his custom every Thursday.