thin clasped hands toward me. And I saw that her bare arms were
covered with the blows of a lash.

"Who did this to you, Assumption?" I asked.

She did not answer, but all her limbs trembled, for she did not
understand, and wondered, perhaps, whether I too was about to inflict
some brutality upon her.

Gently I removed her garment, and saw that her back also was wounded.
I washed it. But she, frightened by such kindness, fled for refuge
under the table of my cabin. My eyes filled with tears. I tried to
call her back. But her glance, like that of a beaten dog, shrank from
me. I had a few potatoes, and a little butter. I mashed them to a pulp
with a wooden spoon, and placed it in a bowl at some distance from the
crouching Assumption. Then I lighted my pipe.

At the end of an hour the poor creature began to move. She put one arm
forward, then the other, and then a knee. I thought she was directing
her attention toward the food in order to eat. But to my astonishment,
I saw her crawl on hands and knees toward a corner of the room, where
I had left a few flowers lying. She rose up quickly, and with a sudden
movement seized them.

* * * * *

It was perhaps a hundred and fifty years after this adventure
occurred, that I met Assumption again. At least I was convinced that
it was she. It was in Bordeaux at the _Restaurant du Pérou_. She
was drying the glass of a gloomy student who had not found it clean