But Simon replied: "Oh! no my dear fellow, if he were to eat too much,
it might harm him at his age."

I held my tongue, and thought over these words. Oh! ethics! Oh! logic!
Oh! wisdom! At his age! So they deprived him of his only remaining
pleasure out of regard for his health! His health! What would he do
with it, inert and trembling wreck that he was? They were taking care
of his life, so they said. His life? How many days? Ten, twenty, fifty,
or a hundred? Why? For his own sake? Or to preserve for some time
longer, the spectacle of his impotent greediness in the family.

There was nothing left for him to do in this life, nothing whatever. He
had one single wish left, one sole pleasure; why not grant him that
last solace constantly, until he died?

After playing cards for a long time, I went up to my room and to bed: I
was low-spirited and sad, sad, sad! I sat at my window, but I heard
nothing but the beautiful warbling of a bird in a tree, somewhere in
the distance. No doubt the bird was singing thus in a low voice during
the night, to lull his mate, who was sleeping on her eggs.

And I thought of my poor friend's five children, and to myself pictured
him snoring by the side of his ugly wife.

BELLFLOWER[1]

[1] Clochette.

How strange are those old recollections which haunt us, without our
being able to get rid of them!

This one is so very old that I cannot understand how it has clung so
vividly and tenaciously to my memory. Since then I have seen so many
sinister things, either affecting or terrible, that I am astonished at
not being able to pass a single day without the face of Mother
Bellflower recurring to my mind's eye, just as I knew her formerly,
long, long ago, when I was ten or twelve years old.

She was an old seamstress who came to my parents' house once a week,
every Thursday, to mend the linen. My parents lived in one of those
country houses called chateaux, which are merely old houses with
pointed roofs, to which are attached three or four adjacent farms.

The village, a large village, almost a small market town, was a few
hundred yards off, and nestled round the church, a red brick church,
which had become black with age.

Well, every Thursday Mother Bellflower came between half past six and
seven in the morning, and went immediately into the linen-room and
began to work. She was a tall, thin, bearded or rather hairy woman, for
she had a beard all over her face, a surprising, an