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my father and my grandfather were botchers before me.
There's some that's for making a big stir in the world, there are. I don't
hold with that idea. What I does, I does."
Suddenly a sonorous tramp persists and repeats itself in the roadway,
and a shape of uncertain equilibrium emerges and advances towards us

by fits and starts; a shape that clings to itself and is impelled by a force
stronger than itself. It is Brisbille, the blacksmith, drunk, as usual.
Espying us, Brisbille utters exclamations. When he has reached us he
hesitates, and then, smitten by a sudden idea, he comes to a standstill,
his boots clanking on the stones, as if he were a cart. He measures the
height of the curb with his eye, but clenches his fists, swallows what he
wanted to say, and goes off reeling, with an odor of hatred and wine,
and his face slashed with red patches.
"That anarchist!" said Crillon, in disgust; "loathsome notions, now,
aren't they? Ah! who'll rid us of him and his alcoholytes?" he adds, as
he offers me his hand. "Good-night. I'm always saying to the Town
Council, 'You must give 'em clink,' I says, 'that gang of Bolshevists, for
the slightest infractionment of the laws against drunkenness.' Yes,
indeed! There's that Jean Latrouille in the Town Council, eh? They talk
about keeping order, but as soon as it's a question of a-doing of it, they
seem like a cold draught."
The good fellow is angry. He raises his great fist and shakes it in space
like a medieval mace. Pointing where Brisbille has just plunged
floundering into the night, he says, "That's what Socialists are,--the
conquering people what can't stand up on their legs! I may be a botcher
in life, but I'm for peace and order. Good-night, good-night. Is she well,
Aunt Josephine? I'm for tranquillity and liberty and order. That's why
I've always kept clear of their crowd. A bit since, I saw her trotting past,
as vivacious as a young girl,--but there, I talk and I talk!"
He enters his shop, but turns on his heel and calls me back, with a
mysterious sign. "You know they've all arrived up yonder at the
castle?" Respect has subdued his voice; a vision is absorbing him of the
lords and ladies of the manor, and as he leaves me he bows,
instinctively.
His shop is a narrow glass cage, which is added to our house, like a
family relation. Within I can just make out the strong, plebeian
framework of Crillon himself, upright beside a serrated heap of ruins,
over which a candle is enthroned. The light which falls on his

accumulated tools and on those hanging from the wall makes a
decoration obscurely golden around the picture of this wise man; this
soul all innocent of envious demands, turning again to his botching, as
his father and grandfather botched.
I have mounted the steps and pushed our door; the gray door, whose
only relief is the key. The door goes in grumblingly, and makes way for
me into the dark passage, which was formerly paved, though now the
traffic of soles has kneaded it with earth, and changed it into a footpath.
My forehead strikes the lamp, which is hooked on the wall; it is out,
oozing oil, and it stinks. One never sees that lamp, and always bangs it.
And though I had hurried so--I don't know why--to get home, at this
moment of arrival I slow down. Every evening I have the same small
and dull disillusion.
I go into the room which serves us as kitchen and dining-room, where
my aunt is lying. This room is buried in almost complete darkness.
"Good evening, Mame."
A sigh, and then a sob arise from the bed crammed against the pale
celestial squares of the window.
Then I remember that there was a scene between my old aunt and me
after our early morning coffee. Thus it is two or three times a week.
This time it was about a dirty window-pane, and on this particular
morning, exasperated by the continuous gush of her reproaches, I flung
an offensive word, and banged the door as I went off to work. So
Mame has had to weep all the day. She has fostered and ruminated her
spleen, and sniffed up her tears, even while busy with household duties.
Then, as the day declined, she put out the lamp and went to bed, with
the object of sustaining and displaying her chagrin.
When I came in she was in the act of peeling invisible potatoes; there
are potatoes scattered over the floor, everywhere. My feet kick them
and send them rolling heavily among odds and ends of utensils and a
soft deposit of garments that are lying