"Come, get up," he said. She got up
with some difficulty, and then, when she was standing on the floor, he
suddenly began to laugh with the hearty laugh of his good days, and,
seeing how surprised she was, he added: "Very well, we will go and fetch
the child, as you and I can have none together."

She was so scared that if she had had the strength she would assuredly
have run away, but the farmer rubbed his hands and said: "I wanted to
adopt one, and now we have found one. I asked the cure about an orphan
some time ago."

Then, still laughing, he kissed his weeping and agitated wife on both
cheeks, and shouted out, as though she could not hear him: "Come along,
mother, we will go and see whether there is any soup left; I should not
mind a plateful."

She put on her petticoat and they went downstairs; and While she was
kneeling in front of the fireplace and lighting the fire under the
saucepan, he continued to walk up and down the kitchen with long
strides, repeating:

"Well, I am really glad of this; I am not saying it for form's sake, but
I am glad, I am really very glad."

THE WRECK

It was yesterday, the 31st of December.

I had just finished breakfast with my old friend Georges Garin when the
servant handed him a letter covered with seals and foreign stamps.

Georges said:

"Will you excuse me?"

"Certainly."

And so he began to read the letter, which was written in a large English
handwriting, crossed and recrossed in every direction. He read them
slowly, with serious attention and the interest which we only pay to
things which touch our hearts.

Then he put the letter on the mantelpiece and said:

"That was a curious story! I've never told you about it, I think. Yet
it was a sentimental adventure, and it really happened to me. That was a
strange New Year's Day, indeed! It must have been twenty years ago, for
I was then thirty and am now fifty years old.

"I was then an inspector in the Maritime Insurance Company, of which I
am now director. I had arranged to pass New Year's Day in Paris--since
it is customary to make that day a fete--when I received a letter from
the manager, asking me to proceed at once to the island of Re, where
a three-masted vessel from Saint-Nazaire, insured by us, had just been
driven ashore. It was then eight o'clock in the morning. I arrived
at the office at ten to get my advices, and that evening I took the
express, which put me down in La Rochelle the next day, t