“Alexandre stood at the door waiting for me and smiling like a little child. He took me by the hand and led me into the ‘parlour.’ The house, half country, half town-like, was neither poor nor ill furnished. And yet my heart was deeply oppressed when I entered, so great was the silence and sadness that reigned. “Near the window, whose curtains were slightly raised as if to satisfy some timid curiosity, I saw a woman who seemed old, though I cannot be sure that she was as old as she appeared to be. She was thin and yellow, and her eyes, under their red lids glowed in their black sockets. Though it was summer her body and her head were shrouded in some black woollen material. But that which made her look most ghastly was a band of metal which encircled her forehead like a diadem. “‘This is mama,’ Le Mansel said to me, ‘she has a headache.’ “Madam Le Mansel greeted me in a plaintive voice, and doubtless observing my astonished glance at her forehead, said, smiling: “‘What I wear on my forehead, young sir, is not a crown; it is a magnetic band to cure my headache.’ I did my best to reply when Le Mansel dragged me away to the garden, where we found a bald little man who flitted along the paths like a ghost. He was so thin and so light that there seemed some danger of his being blown away by the wind. His timid manner and lus long and lean neck, when he bent forward, and his head, no larger than a man’s fist, his shy side-glances and his skipping gait, his short arms uplifted like a pair of flippers, gave him undeniably a great resemblance to a plucked chicken. “My friend, Le Mansel, explained that this was his father, but that they were obliged to let him stay in the yard as he really only lived in the company of his chickens, and he had in their society quite forgotten to talk to human beings. As he spoke his father suddenly disappeared, and very soon an ecstatic clucking filled the air. He was with his chickens. “Le Mansel and I strolled several times around the garden and he told me that at dinner, presently, I should see his grandmother, but that I was to take no notice of what she said, as she was sometimes a little out of her mind. Then he drew me aside into a pretty arbour and whispered, blushing: “‘I have written some verses about Tiphaine Raguel. I’ll repeat them to you some other time. You’ll see, you’ll see.’ “The dinner-bell rang and we went into the dining-room. M. Le Mansel came in with at basket full of eggs. “‘Eighteen this morning,’ he said, and his voice sounded like a cluck.