The house of Paragot was not a palace. It stood, low and whitewashed, amid a medley of little tumble-down erections, and was guarded on one side by cowsheds and on the other by the haystack. You stepped across the threshold into the kitchen. A door on the right gave access to the bedroom. A ladder connected with a hole in the roof enabled you to reach the cockloft, the guest room of the establishment. That was all. What on earth could man want more? asked Paragot. The old rep suite, the table with the American cloth, the coloured prints in gilt frames including the portrait of Garibaldi, the cheap deal bookcases holding Paragot's tattered classics, gave the place an air of familiar homeliness. A mattock, a gun and a cradle warred against old associations.
When we entered, the child began to whimper. Perhaps it did not approve of the gun. Like myself he may, in trembling fancy, have heard its owner cry: "I have an inspiration! Let us go out and shoot cows." Paragot found another reason.
"That infant's life is a perpetual rebellion against his name. I chose Triptolème. A beautiful name. If you look at him you see it written all over him. Blanquette was crazy for Thomas. In indignation I swore he should be christened Triptolème Onésime. Blanquette wept. I yielded. 'At least let him be called Didyme,' I pleaded. Didyme! There is something caressing about Didyme. Repeat it. 'Didyme.' But no. Blanquette wept louder. She wept so loud that all the ducks ran in to see whether I was murdering her——"
"It is not true!" protested Blanquette. "How can you say those things? You know they are not true."
"Her state was so terrible," continued my master, "that I sacrificed my son's destiny. Behold Thomas. I too would howl if I had such a name."
"He is hungry," said Blanquette, "and it is a very pretty name. He likes to hear it, n'est-ce pas, mon petit Tho-Thom chéri? There! He smiles."
"She is really convinced that he has heard her call him Thomas. Oh, woman!" said Paragot.
That evening, after we had feasted on cabbage-soup and the piece of beef which I had been too stuck-up to dandle on my knees, and clear brown cider, the three of us sat outside the house, in the warm August moonlight. Sinking into an infinitely far horizon stretched the fruitful plain of France, cornland and pasture, and near us the stacked sheaves of Paragot's corn stood quiet and pregnant symbols of the good earth's plenty. Here and there dark patches of orchard dreamed in a haze. Through one distant patch a farmhouse struck a muffled note of grey. On the left the ribbon of road glistened white between the sentinel poplars silhouetted against the sky. The hot smell of the earth filled the air like spice. A thousand elfin sounds, the vibration of leaves, the tiny crackling of cornstalks, the fairy whirr of ground insects, melted into a companionable stillness.
Blanquette half dozed, her head against Paragot's shoulder, as she had done that far-off evening of our return from Chambéry. The smoke from his porcelain pipe curled upwards through the still air. I was near enough to him on the other side, for him to lay his hand on my arm.
"My son," he whispered in English, "I was right when I said I had come to the end of my journey. Eventually I am right in everything. I prophesied that I would make little Augustus Smith a scholar and a gentleman. Te voilà. I knew that my long pilgrimage would ultimately lead me to the Inner Shrine. Isn't all this," he waved his pipe in a circular gesture, "the Holy of Holies of the Real? Is there any illusion in the unutterable poetry of the night? Is there anything false in this promise of the fruitful earth? My God! Asticot, I am happy! When the soul laughs tears come into the eyes. I have all that the heart of man can desire—the love of this dear wife of mine—the child asleep within doors—the printed wisdom of the world in a dozen tongues of men, caught up hap-hazard in what I once, in a failing hour, thought was my wildgoose chase after Truth—the pride in you, my little Asticot, the son of my adoption—and the most overpowering sleepiness that ever sat upon mortal eyelid."