We were a company of men talking after dinner, amid the tobacco smoke, about sudden turns of story and strange, wondrous circumstances, when Monsieur Le Brument — who was called now the brilliant master, now the skillful advocate — rose, leaned upon the mantelpiece, and said: In these days I must search for an heir who van-ished from sight in dreadful circum-stances. This is one of the terrible tales of common life, a case that might happen any day, and it is, for all that, among the most fearsome cases I have ever known. Here it is:

About six months ago I was summoned to the side of a dying lady, and she said to me:

— «Sir, I am going to charge you with one of the most difficult, most delicate, and longest of missions. You would do well to look, if you wish, at my will, which lies here on the table. In it I have written you a sum of six thousand francs if you do not succeed, and a sum of one hundred thousand francs if success is granted you: you must find my son after my death.»

Here she begged me to help her sit up in her bed so that she might speak with greater ease, for her panting voice trembled and broke.

I found myself in a very rich house. The sick woman's sumptuous room was furnished with taste and simplicity, its furnishings padded with stuffs thick as the walls, so soft that the beholder felt a great ease at the sight of them, and so hushed that words seemed to vanish into their folds and die away.

The dying woman went on:

— You are the first person to whom I shall confide my dreadful story. I shall do my utmost, so far as my strength holds, to carry it to its end; and you must be left ignorant of nothing in it, so that there may arise in you a sincere desire to aid me with all your power. I know you are a compassionate, tender-hearted man, and one of worldwide renown. Now listen to me:

Before my marriage I loved a young man whose suit my family refused because he was not possessed of an ample fortune; and a short time afterward I married a very rich man. I was joined to him out of ignorance, fear, obedience, and passivity, as artless girls usually are. I was blessed with a boy; and after several years had passed, my husband died. The man I had loved before had married in the meantime, and when he saw me widowed he felt an excessive grief, for he was not free. He came to visit me, and he wept and sobbed before me a sobbing that breaks the heart;

then he became my friend. I ought not to have received him — but what was I to do? I was alone, sorrowful, alone to the farthest limits of loneliness, and wretched altogether! And I loved him still.

Oh, how one suffers at times!

I had no one in the world but him, for my parents too had died. He came often, to visit me or to pass whole evenings at my side. I ought not to have let him come so constantly, since he was married; but I had not the strength to forbid him. What shall I tell you?...

He became my lover! And how did it come to pass? Do I know? Does anyone know? Do you believe it could happen otherwise, when the force of a mutual love drives two human beings toward each other? Do you believe, sir, that it lies within man's power to oppose, to resist, to refuse forever what is begged of us with prayers and entreaties and tears and mad words and kneelings and passion, by the man we worship — the man we long to see made happy in his least desires, the man we long to flood with every possible delight, and who will lose every hope and every wish of his if we defer to the honor of society? What strength would that require! What renunciation of happiness, what sacrifice! Is it not so?

At last I became his mistress, and I was happy. That happiness of mine lasted twelve years. And I became the friend of his wife — and that is my greatest weakness and my gravest betrayal.

Together we saw to my son's upbringing and his formation, that he might become a man complete in manhood — intelligent, filled with feeling and will and wide, daring aims. The boy reached his seventeenth year. And my son loved... my lover — almost as much as he loved me, for he had been steeped in the affection and care of us both. He called him «the good friend» and bore him a profound respect, for from him he had received nothing but wise counsel and true examples of uprightness, honesty, and honor. He looked upon him as a faithful and loyal friend of his mother — say rather a good father, or a guardian, a protector, a champion — I know not what. I think he never once asked himself about that man's relation to us, for he had been used, from his tenderest years, to seeing that man in our house, at his side and at mine, forever occupied with our affairs.

One evening we had decided that the three of us should take supper together (those gatherings were among my greatest joys), and I was waiting for the two of them, asking myself: «Which of them will come first?» The door opened, and my intimate friend appeared. I went toward him with open arms, and he laid upon my lips a long kiss of happiness.

Of a sudden there reached our ears the sound of a very slight movement — say rather that we felt that dreadful sensation which tells of another's presence in the room. We shuddered and turned about with a start and a tremor; and there we saw my son Jean standing erect before us, gazing at us, the marks of pain and scorn plain upon his face. A moment of sheer madness passed over us at that scene! I moved toward my son, imploring, entreating — but I never saw him, for he had vanished from sight. We stood face to face, stunned, unable to speak. I sank down upon the seat and felt a desire to flee — a pressing, violent desire to go out into the night and disappear without return. Then my throat filled with the choking of sobs and I wept, seized by a sharp fit of convulsions that made me feel my soul being torn apart and my nerves writhing under the nightmare of that shuddering sense of a calamity whose breach can never be closed, and of that shameful disgrace which falls upon a mother's heart in such circumstances.

And he... stood dumb-founded before me, not daring to come near me, nor to speak to me, nor to touch me, for fear the boy should return. Then, after a long silence, he said:

— «I am going to look for him... I will tell him... I will make him understand... I must see him, and he must know...»

Then he went out. And I waited... and I waited, distracted, trembling at the least movement, for terror possessed me, and I know not what manner of unbearable agitation — above all when I heard the fire blazing in the hearth.

I waited an hour, then two, feeling a strange shuddering grow within my heart, and an anguish so great that I would not wish the greatest criminal among men to feel its like for even ten minutes. Where was my son? What was he doing?

Toward midnight a messen-ger came to me bearing a note from my friend, whose sub-stance I still keep by heart:

«Has your son come home? I