dig in the ground, and all three planted young trees in the spring, sowed seed and watched it growing with the deepest interest, pruned branches and cut flowers for bouquets.
Poulet was almost fifteen, but was a mere child in intelligence, ignorant, silly, suppressed between petticoat government and this kind old man who belonged to another century.
One evening the baron spoke of college, and Jeanne at once began to sob. Aunt Lison timidly remained in a dark corner.
“Why does he need to know so much?” asked his mother. “We will make a gentleman farmer of him. He can cultivate his land, as many of the nobility do. He will live and grow old happily in this house, where we have lived before him and where we shall die. What more can one do?”
But the baron shook his head. “What would you say to him if he should say to you when he is twenty-five: ‘I amount to nothing, I know nothing, all through your fault, the fault of your maternal selfishness. I feel that I am incapable of working, of making something of myself, and yet I was not intended for a secluded, simple life, lonely enough to kill one, to which I have been condemned by your shortsighted affection.’”
She was weeping and said entreatingly: “Tell me, Poulet, you will not reproach me for having loved you too well?” And the big boy, in surprise, promised that he never would. “Swear it,” she said. “Yes, mamma.” “You want to stay here, don’t you?” “Yes, mamma.”
Then the baron spoke up loud and decidedly: “Jeanne, you have no right to make disposition of this life. What you are doing is cowardly and almost criminal; you are sacrificing your child to your own private happiness.”
She hid her face in her hands, sobbing convulsively, and stammered out amid her tears: “I have been so unhappy — so unhappy! Now, just as I am living peacefully with him, they want to take him away from me. What will become of me now — all by myself?” Her father rose and, sitting down beside her, put his arms round her. “And how about me, Jeanne?”
She put her arms suddenly round his neck, gave him a hearty kiss and with her voice full of tears, she said: “Yes, you are right perhaps, little father. I was foolish, but I have suffered so much. I am quite willing he should go to college.”
And without knowing exactly what they were going to do with him, Poulet in his turn began to weep.
Then the three mothers began to kiss him and pet him and encourage him. When they retired to their rooms it was with a weight at their hearts, and they all wept, even the baron, who had restrained himself up to that.
It was decided that when the term began to put the young boy to school at Havre, and during the summer he was petted more than ever; his mother sighed often as she thought of the separation. She prepared his wardrobe as if he were going to undertake a ten years’ voyage. One October morning, after a sleepless night, the two women and the baron got into the carriage with him and set out on their journey.
They had previously selected his place in the dormitory and his desk in the school room. Jeanne, aided by Aunt Lison, spent the whole day in arranging his clothes in his little wardrobe. As it did not hold a quarter of what they had brought, she went to look for the superintendent to ask for another. The treasurer was called, but he pointed out that all that amount of clothing would only be in the way and would never be needed, and he refused, on behalf of the directors, to let her have another chest of drawers. Jeanne, much annoyed, decided to hire a room in a small neighboring hotel, begging the proprietor to go himself and take Poulet whatever he required as soon as the boy asked for it.
They then took a walk on the pier to look at the ships coming and going. They went into a restaurant to dine, but they were none of them able to eat, and looked at one another with moistened eyes as the dishes were brought on and taken away almost untouched.
They now returned slowly toward the school. Boys of all ages were arriving from all quarters, accompanied by their families or by servants. Many of them were crying.
Jeanne held Poulet in a long embrace, while Aunt Lison remained in the background, her face hidden in her handkerchief. The baron, however, who was becoming affected, cut short the adieus by dragging his daughter away. They got into the carriage and went back through the darkness to “The Poplars,” the silence being broken by an occasional sob.
Jeanne wept all the following day and on the day after drove to Havre in the phaeton. Poulet seemed to have become reconciled to the separation. For the first time in his life he now had playmates, and in his anxiety to join them he could scarcely sit still on his chair when his mother called. She continued her visits to him every other day and called to take him home on Sundays. Not knowing what to do with herself while school was in session until recreation time, she would remain sitting in the reception room, not having the strength or the courage to go very far from the school. The superintendent sent to ask her to come to his office and begged her not to come so frequently. She paid no attention to his request. He therefore informed her that if she continued to prevent her son from taking his recreation at the usual hours, obliging him to work without a change of occupation, they would be forced to send him back home again, and the baron was also notified to the same effect. She was consequently watched like a prisoner at “The Poplars.”
She became restless and worried and would ramble about for whole days in the country, accompanied only by Massacre, dreaming as she walked along. Sometimes she would remain seated for a whole afternoon, looking out at the sea from the top of the cliff; at other times she would go down to Yport through the wood, going over the ground of her former walks, the memory of which haunted her. How long ago — how long ago it was — the time when she had gone over these same paths as a young girl, carried away by her dreams.
Poulet was not very industrious at school; he was kept two years in the fourth form. The third year’s work was only tolerable and he had to begin the second over again, so that he was in rhetoric when he was twenty.
He was now a big, fair young man, with downy whiskers and a faint sign of a mustache. He now came home to “The Poplars” every Sunday, riding over in a couple of hours, his mother, Aunt Lison and the baron starting out early to go and meet him.
Although he was a head taller than his mother, she always treated him as though he were a child, and when he returned to school in the evening she would charge him anxiously not to go too fast and to think of his poor mother, who would break her heart if anything happened to him.
One Saturday morning she received a letter from Paul, saying that he would not be home on the following day because some friends had arranged an excursion and had invited him. She was tormented with anxiety all day Sunday, as though she dreaded some misfortune, and on Thursday, as she could endure it no longer, she set out for Havre.
He seemed to be changed, though she could not have told in what manner. He appeared excited and his voice seemed deeper. And suddenly, as though it were the most natural thing in the world, he said: “I say, mother, as long as you have come to-day, I want to tell you that I will not be at ‘The Poplars’ next Sunday, for we are going to have another excursion.”
She was amazed, smothering, as if he had announced his departure for America. At last, recovering herself, she said: “Oh, Poulet, what is the matter with you? Tell me what is going on.”
He began to laugh, and kissing her, replied: “Why, nothing, nothing, mamma. I am going to have a good time with my friends; I am just at that age.”
She had nothing to say, but when she was alone in the carriage all manner of ideas came into her mind. She no longer recognized him, her Poulet, her little Poulet of former days. She felt for the
