THE CHILD

Lemonnier had remained a widower with one child. He had loved his wife
devotedly, with a tender and exalted love, without a slip, during their
entire married life. He was a good, honest man, perfectly simple,
sincere, without suspicion or malice.

He fell in love with a poor neighbor, proposed and was accepted. He was
making a very comfortable living out of the wholesale cloth business, and
he did not for a minute suspect that the young girl might have accepted
him for anything else but himself.

She made him happy. She was everything to him; he only thought of her,
looked at her continually, with worshiping eyes. During meals he would
make any number of blunders, in order not to have to take his eyes from
the beloved face; he would pour the wine in his plate and the water in
the salt-cellar, then he would laugh like a child, repeating:

"You see, I love you too much; that makes me crazy."

She would smile with a calm and resigned look; then she would look away,
as though embarrassed by the adoration of her husband, and try to make
him talk about something else; but he would take her hand under the table
and he would hold it in his, whispering:

"My little Jeanne, my darling little Jeanne!"

She sometimes lost patience and said: