at the intruder. He expected that when he approached
it, the toad would crawl away, and that he could throw the stone after
it; but to his surprise, the beast sat quite unmoved, looking at him
with calm shining eyes, and somehow or other, Monsieur the Viscount
lacked strength or heart to kill it. He stood doubtful for a moment, and
then a sudden feeling of weakness obliged him to drop the stone, and sit
down, while tears sprang to his eyes with a sense of his helplessness.

"Why should I kill it?" he said bitterly. "The beast will live and grow
fat upon this damp and loathsomeness, long after they have put an end to
my feeble life. It shall remain. The cell is not big, but it is big
enough for us both. However large be the rooms a man builds himself to
live in, it needs but little space in which to die!"

So Monsieur the Viscount dragged his pallet away from the toad, placed
another stone by it, and removed the pitcher; and then, wearied with his
efforts, lay down and slept heavily.

When he awoke, on the new stone by the pitcher was the toad, staring
full at him with topaz eyes. He lay still this time and did not move,
for the animal showed no intention of spitting, and he was puzzled by
its tameness.

"It seems to like the sight of a man," he thought. "Is it possible that
any former inmate of this wretched prison can have amused his solitude
by making a pet of such a creature? and if there were such a man, where
is he now?"

Henceforward, sleeping or waking, whenever Monsieur the Viscount lay
down upon his pallet, the toad crawled up on to the stone, and kept
watch over him with shining lustrous eyes; but whenever there was a
sound of the key grating in the lock, and the gaoler coming his rounds,
away crept the toad, and was quickly lost in the dark corners of the
room. When the man was gone, it returned to its place, and Monsieur the
Viscount would talk to it, as he lay on his pallet.

"Ah! Monsieur Crapaud," he would say with mournful pleasantry, "without
doubt you have had a master, and a kind one; but tell me who was he, and
where is he now? Was he old or young, and was it in the last stage of
maddening loneliness that he made friends with such a creature as you?"

Monsieur Crapaud looked very intelligent, but he made no reply, and
Monsieur the Viscount had recourse to Antoine.

"Who was in this cell before me?" he asked at the gaoler's next visit.

Antoine's face clouded. "Monsieur le Cure had this room.