III
THE CHILD AND THE BOWL
Auguste followed the road that Denise had pointed out to him, his thoughts still fixed on the little milkmaid. The most fickle of men remembers the last woman who has succeeded in attracting him, until some new and pleasing object, causing him to feel other desires, effaces from his mind the charms of which he has lately dreamed.
Suddenly the sound of tears and lamentations roused the young man from his reverie. He looked about and spied, some ten yards away, by a large tree, a little boy of six years at most, dressed like a peasant’s child, in a little jacket, trousers torn in several places, no stockings, and heavy wooden shoes; his head was bare, protected only by a forest of fair hair.
Auguste walked toward the little fellow, who wept lustily, and gazed with an air of stupefaction at the fragments of an earthen vessel at his feet, the former contents of which were spilled on the road. The child did not turn to look at the person who spoke to him, all his thoughts being concentrated on the broken vessel; he could do nothing but weep, raising to his head and eyes from time to time a pair of very grimy little hands, which, being wet by his tears, smeared his chubby face with mud.
“Why, what makes you cry so, my boy?” asked Auguste, stooping in order to be nearer the child.
The little fellow raised for an instant a pair of light-blue eyes, about which his little hands had drawn circles of black; then turned them again upon the pieces of broken crockery, muttering:
“I’ve broke the bowl—hi! hi! and papa’s soup was in it—hi! hi! I’ll get a licking, like I did before—hi! hi!”
“The deuce! that would be a misfortune, and no mistake! But stop crying, my boy, perhaps we can fix it all right. You say that you were carrying soup to your father?”
“Yes, and I broke the bowl.”
“So I see. But why do they make you carry such a big bowl? You’re too small as yet. How old are you, my boy?”