enough, the mothers among themselves
treated her with compassion of a somewhat disdainful kind, which the
children had caught without in the least knowing why.

As for Simon himself, they did not know him, for he never went
abroad, and did not go galloping about with them through the streets
of the village or along the banks of the river. Therefore, they loved
him but little; and it was with a certain delight, mingled with
considerable astonishment, that they met and that they recited to
each other this phrase, set afoot by a lad of fourteen or fifteen who
appeared to know all, all about it, so sagaciously did he wink. "You
know ... Simon ... well, he has no papa."

La Blanchotte's son appeared in his turn upon the threshold of the
school.

He was seven or eight years old. He was rather pale, very neat, with
a timid and almost awkward manner.

He was on the point of making his way back to his mother's house when the
groups of his school-fellows perpetually whispering and watching him with
the mischievous and heartless eyes of children bent upon playing a nasty
trick, gradually surrounded him and ended by enclosing him altogether.
There he stood fixed amidst them, surprised and embarrassed, not
understanding what they were going to do with him. But the lad who had
brought the news, puffed up with the success he had met with already,
demanded:

"How do you name yourself, you?"

He answered: "Simon."

"Simon what?" retorted the other.

The child, altogether bewildered, repeated: "Simon."

The lad shouted at him: "One is named Simon something ... that is not
a name ... Simon indeed."

And he, on the brink of tears, replied for the third time:

"I am named Simon."

The urchins fell a-laughing. The lad triumphantly lifted up his voice:
"You can see plainly that he has no papa."

A deep silence ensued. The children were dumbfounded by this
extraordinary, impossible monstrous thing--a boy who had not a papa; they
looked upon him as a phenomenon, an unnatural being, and they felt that
contempt, until then inexplicable, of their mothers for La Blanchotte
grow upon them. As for Simon, he had propped himself against a tree to
avoid falling and he remained as though struck to the earth by an
irreparable disaster. He sought to explain, but he could think of no
answer for them, to deny this horrible charge that he had no papa. At
last he shouted at them quite recklessly: "Yes, I have one."

"Where is he?" demanded