The Colonel, stupefied, raised his hand, and for the second time the
peasant spat in his face.

All the officers sprang to their feet and yelled out orders at the same
time.

In less than a minute the old man, still as impassive as ever, was stuck
up against the wall and shot, while he cast a smile at Jean, his eldest
son, and then at his daughter-in-law and the two children, who were
staring with terror at the scene.




THE ORPHAN


Mademoiselle Source had adopted this boy under very sad circumstances.
She was at the time thirty-six years old. She was disfigured, having in
her infancy slipped off her nurse's lap into the fireplace, and getting
her face so shockingly burned that it ever afterward presented a
frightful appearance. This deformity had made her resolve not to marry,
for she did not want any man to marry her for her money.

A female neighbor of hers, being left a widow during her pregnancy, died
in childbirth, without leaving a sou. Mademoiselle Source took the
newborn child, put him out to nurse, reared him, sent him to a
boarding-school, then brought him home in his fourteenth year, in order
to have in her empty house somebody who would love her, who would look
after her, who would make her old age pleasant.