ented, in this extremity, a
reason that was not the truth. 'I am extremely sorry, dear Madame, but
that will be impossible for us. Sunday I expect the gardener.'

"On hearing this, Madame Cornouiller looked through the glass door of
the salon at the little wild garden, where the prickwood and the lilies
looked as though they had never known the pruning-knife and were likely
never to know it. 'You expect the gardener! What for?'

"'To work in the garden.'

"And my mother, having involuntarily turned her eyes on this little
square of weeds and plants run wild, that she had called a garden,
recognized with dismay the improbability of her excuse.

"'This man,' said Madame Cornouiller, 'could just as well work in your
garden Monday or Tuesday. Moreover, that will be much better.' One
should not work on Sunday.'

"'He works all the week.'

"I have often noticed that the most absurd and ridiculous reasons are
the least disputed: they disconcert the adversary. Madame Cornouiller
insisted, less than one might expect of a person so little disposed to
give up. Rising from her armchair, she asked:

"'What do you call your gardener, dearest?'

"'Putois,' answered my mother without hesitation.

"Putois was named. From that time he existed. Madame Cornouiller took
herself off, murmuring: 'Putois! It seems to me that I know that name.
Putois! Putois! I must know him. But I do not recollect him. Where does
he live?'

"'He works by the day. When one wants him one leaves word with this one
or that one.'

"'Ah! I thought so, a loafer and a vagabond--a good-for-nothing. Don't
trust him, dearest.'

"From that time Putois had a character.'"

II

Messieurs Goubin and Jean Marteau having arrived, Monsieur Bergeret put
them in touch with the conversation.

"We were speaking of him whom my mother caused to be born gardener at
Saint-Omer and whom she christened. He existed from that time on."

"Dear master, will you kindly repeat that?" said Monsieur Goubin, wiping
the glass of his monocle.

"Willingly," replied Monsieur Bergeret. "There was no gardener. The
gardener did not exist. My mother said: 'I am waiting for the gardener.'
At once the gardener was. He lived."

"Dear master," said Monsieur Goubin, "how could he live since he did not
exist?"

"He had a sort of existence," replied Monsieur Bergeret.

"You mean an imaginary existence," Monsieur Goubin replied,
disdainfully.

"Is it nothing then, but an imagina