THE ASPIRATIONS OF JEAN SERVIEN


BY ANATOLE FRANCE

A TRANSLATION BY ALFRED ALLINSON




I

Jean Servien was born in a back-shop in the _Rue Notre-Dame
des Champs_. His father was a bookbinder and worked for the
Religious Houses. Jean was a little weakling child, and his mother
nursed him at her breast as she sewed the books, sheet by sheet,
with the curved needle of the trade. One day as she was crossing
the shop, humming a song, in the words of which she found expression
for the vague, splendid visions of her maternal ambition, her
foot slipped on the boards, which were moist with paste.

Instinctively she threw up her arm to guard the child she held
clasped to her bosom, and struck her breast, thus exposed, a
severe blow against the corner of the iron press. She felt no
very acute pain at the time, but later on an abscess formed,
which got well, but presently reopened, and a low fever supervened
that confined her to her bed.

There, in the long, long evenings, she would fold her little
one in her one sound arm and croon over him in a hot, feverish