Two months later the Abbe Constantin took back to Longueval the coffin of his friend, and behind the coffin, when it was carried from the church, walked an orphan. Jean had also lost his mother. At the news of her husband’s death, Madame Reynaud had remained for twenty-four hours petrified, crushed, without a word or a tear; then fever had seized her, then delirium, and after a fortnight, death.
Jean was alone in the world; he was fourteen years old. Of that family, where for more than a century all had been good and honest, there remained only a child kneeling beside a grave; but he, too, promised to be what his father and grandfather before him had been--good, and honest, and true.
There are families like that in France, and many of them, more than one ventures to say. Our poor country is in many respects calumniated by certain novelists, who draw exaggerated and distorted pictures of it. It is true the history of good people is often monotonous or painful. This story is a proof of it.
The grief of Jean was the grief of a man. He remained long sad and silent. The evening of his father’s funeral the Abbe Constantin took him home to the vicarage. The day had been rainy and cold. Jean was sitting by the fireside; the priest was reading his breviary opposite him. Old Pauline came and went, arranging her affairs.
An hour passed without a word, when Jean, raising his head, said:
“Godfather, did my father leave me any money?”
This question was so extraordinary that the old priest, stupefied, could scarcely believe that he heard aright.
“I asked if my father left me some money?”
“A good deal, don’t you think? I have often heard people say that my father was rich. Tell me about how much he has left me!”
The poor old man felt his heart rent in twain. Such a question at such a moment! Yet he thought he knew the boy’s heart, and in that heart there should not be room for such thoughts.
“Pray, dear godfather, tell me,” continued Jean, gently. “I will explain to you afterward why I ask that.”
“Well, they say your father had 200,000 or 300,000 francs.”
“Oh! I am glad, because, you know, the day that my father was killed in the war, the Prussians killed, at the same time, the son of a poor woman in Longueval--old Clemence, you know; and they killed, too, the brother of Rosalie, with whom I used to play when I was quite little. Well, since I am rich and they are poor, I will divide with Clemence and Rosalie the money my father has left me.”