the coast there was no one to whom she could sell
herself.
As for me, she had taken all my money, my brains, my honor, my future, everything! What more could I give her? Nothing. Why then should she come? If I had only told her that I had ten thousand francs left she would have come running. But to what purpose? Ah! Let her not come! My anger subsided, self-disgust replaced it, a frightful disgust! How could it be possible that a man who was not bad, whose past aspirations lacked neither nobility of character nor ardor, should fall so low, in such a short time, into a mire so deep that no human force could lift him out of it! . . .
What I now suffered from was not so much my own follies, my own disgrace and crimes as the misery which I had caused those around me. Old Marie!. . . Old Felix! . . . Oh, the poor couple! Where were they now? What were they doing? Did they have anything to eat, at least? Had I not compelled them to beg their bread when I expelled them so old, so kind, so confiding, more feeble and desolate than homeless dogs! I saw them bent over their staffs, horribly thin, coughing, harassed, spending nights in chance lodgings. And the sainted Mother Le Gannec who took care of me as a mother her child, who lulled me to sleep with her warm caresses like those bestowed on little ones! Instead of kneeling before her, of thanking her, did I not treat her brutally, did I not almost beat her! Ah, no! Let her not come! Let her not come!
Mother Le Gannec lit the lamp, and I was about to close the window when I heard the tinkling of small bells upon the road, then the trundling of a carriage. I mechanically looked out. Indeed a carriage had ascended the steep hill of this place, it was a sort of
