“You see,” he was saying in a tearful voice, “the bill has been running several years.” “Send it to the son,” Martinod advised. “It is not his affair.” “All the same, you’ll see that he will pay it. That I can guarantee. It’s a good trick to pay him against the elections. And besides, the boy has had some.” Whom was he talking about? I had not noticed. But suddenly Martinod gazed at me, and under that gaze I at once remembered the slap he had received. I even felt a vague remorse at being in his company; but grandfather had surely kept on going with him. After all, he had received and not given the slap, and here he was, raising his arm to heaven as if some one had committed an unpardonable crime against me: “That child has nothing to drink!” I should never have believed him so solicitous with regard to me. Everybody had neglected me for a long time, and in fact, but for the passion which absorbed me, and inclined me to privations for the very love of suffering, I should have observed the infrequency of the glasses of syrup. The oversight was immediately repaired. The materials generally reserved for full grown men were set before me; I was solemnly offered a _verte_--of course an attenuated, diluted, inoffensive _verte_. “I will mix it myself,” declared Martinod. “I’ll leave it to you,” observed grandfather indifferently, interrupting himself in a heated discussion with Gallus as to the Andante of Bach’s second sonata for piano and violin. “And no practical jokes.” “Father Rambert, don’t you worry!” Certainly that Martinod was a good fellow, agreeable and slow to take offence. His cheek was perhaps still warm from that slap, and he was caring for me as for his own youngster! He didn’t mix it the same way grandfather did. The superimposed lumps of sugar were melted; now he might pour the absinthe. Upon my word! He surely was treating me seriously and not like a baby gorged with milk! That brew must be extraordinary! I tasted it and pronounced it delicious, without knowing why, the better to play my own part; and this gained me the suffrages of Casenave and Galurin. “That’s the first,” they declared, “but it shall not be the last.” I was almost the object of an ovation, and in gratitude I turned upon Martinod a humid eye. But why did he look at me in silence with that compassionate look? Had I a papier-mâché countenance? He finally leaned over me and whispered in my ear a few simple words that completed my disquietude: “Poor little fellow!”