women looked at them without understanding.

He then said for the third time, sobbing as he did so:

"Jean!"

The man stooped down, with his face close to the old man's, and as a
memory of his childhood dawned on him he replied:

"Papa Pierre, Mamma Jeanne!"

He had forgotten everything, his father's surname and the name of his
native place, but he always remembered those two words that he had so
often repeated: "Papa Pierre, Mamma Jeanne."

He sank to the floor, his face on the old man's knees, and he wept,
kissing now his father and then his mother, while they were almost
breathless from intense joy.

The two ladies also wept, understanding as they did that some great
happiness had come to pass.

Then they all went to the young man's house and he told them his
history. The circus people had carried him off. For three years he
traveled with them in various countries. Then the troupe disbanded,
and one day an old lady in a chateau had paid to have him stay with her
because she liked his appearance. As he was intelligent, he was sent to
school, then to college, and the old lady having no children, had left
him all her money. He, for his part, had tried to find his parents, but
as he could remember only the two names, "Papa Pierre, Mamma Jeanne,"
he had been unable to do so. Now he was about to be married, and he
introduced his fiancee, who was very good and very pretty.

When the two old people had told their story in their turn he kissed
them once more. They sat up very late that night, not daring to retire
lest the happiness they had so long sought should escape them again
while they were asleep.

But misfortune had lost its hold on them and they were happy for the
rest of their lives.

A PARRICIDE

The lawyer had presented a plea of insanity. How could anyone explain
this strange crime otherwise?

One morning, in the grass near Chatou, two bodies had been found, a man
and a woman, well known, rich, no longer young and married since the
preceding year, the woman having been a widow for three years before.

They were not known to have enemies; they had not been robbed. They
seemed to have been thrown from the roadside into the river, after
having been struck, one after the other, with a long iron spike.

The investigation revealed nothing. The boatmen, who had been
questioned, knew nothing. The matter was about to be given up, when a
young carpenter from a neighboring village, Georges Louis, ni