"You are right, while the thing is going on; but at our ages a man can talk of anything, and you are not like the idiots who can see nothing but a cause for laughter in the greatest misfortune with which their neighbor can be afflicted. You are neither sneering nor unkind, and I want you to tell me whether I behaved badly, whether I acted like a man or a brute--in short, whether you would have done as I did; for everybody blamed me more or less at the time, and if I had not had a strong arm and a sharp tongue at the end of it, everybody would have laughed in my face. You are to judge! My wife, my poor Nannie, loved one of my friends, a handsome fellow--yes, and a good fellow--and yet she loved me too. I don't know how the devil it came about, but I discovered one fine morning that my son looked more like Pierre than like Jean. Anybody could see it, monsieur! and there were times when I longed to beat Nannie, to strangle the child and knock out Pierre's brains. And then--and then--I said nothing at all. I wept and prayed. Oh! how I suffered! I beat my wife on the pretext that she didn't keep the house in order; I pulled the little one's ears on the pretext that he made too much noise in mine; I picked a quarrel with Pierre over a game of tenpins, and I nearly broke both his legs with the ball. And then, when everybody else wept, I wept, too, and looked on myself as a villain. I brought up the child and I wept for him; I buried my wife and I still weep for her; I kept the friend and I still love him. And that's how matters ended with me. What do you say to it?" Monsieur de Boisguilbault did not reply. He was pacing the room and making the floor creak under his feet. "You think me a great coward and a great fool, I'll be bound," said the carpenter, rising; "but, at all events, you see that your troubles are nothing like mine." The marquis dropped into a chair and said nothing. Tears rolled slowly down his cheeks.