started for
Chambery. Now five of us come to La Haye. _C'est drole, hein?_"

"_Tu es contente?_" I asked.

Her arm tightened, and her eyes grew moist.

"_Mais oui_," she said in a low voice. Then she looked at Paragot and
the child, a yard or two in front of us.

"He is the image of his father," she said almost reverentially.

I burst out laughing. Where the likeness lay between the chubby,
snub-nosed, eighteen months old baby, and the hairy, battered Paragot,
no human eye but Blanquette's could discover. I vowed he resembled a
little Japanese idol.

"_Pauvre cheri_," said Blanquette, motherwise.

The house of Paragot was not a palace. It stood, low and whitewashed,
amid a medley of little tumble-down erections, and was guarded on one
side by cowsheds and on the other by the haystack. You stepped across
the threshold into the kitchen. A door on the right gave access to the
bedroom. A ladder connected with a hole in the roof enabled you to reach
the cockloft, the guest room of the establishment. That was all. What
on earth could man want more? asked Paragot. The old rep suite, the
table with the American cloth, the coloured prints in gilt frames
including the portrait of Garibaldi, the cheap deal bookcases holding
Paragot's tattered classics, gave the place an air of familiar
homeliness. A mattock, a gun and a cradle warred against old
associations.

When we entered, the child began to whimper. Perhaps it did not approve
of the gun. Like myself he may, in trembling fancy, have heard its owner
cry: "I have an inspiration! Let us go out and shoot cows." Paragot
found another reason.

"That infant's life is a perpetual rebellion against his name. I chose
Triptoleme. A beautiful name. If you look at him you see it written all
over him. Blanquette was crazy for Thomas. In indignation I swore he
should be christened Triptoleme Onesime. Blanquette wept. I yielded. 'At
least let him be called Didyme,' I pleaded. Didyme! There is something
caressing about Didyme. Repeat it. 'Didyme.' But no. Blanquette wept
louder. She wept so loud that all the ducks ran in to see whether I was
murdering her----"

"It is not true!" protested Blanquette. "How can you say those things?
You know they are not true."

"Her state was so terrible," continued my master, "that I sacrificed my
son's destiny. Behold Thomas. I too would howl if I had such a name."

"He is hungry," said Blanquette, "and it is a very pretty name. He likes
to h