The Snowball Read Free

thousands in every town of
France.
    A small lamp, which the woman was in the act of lighting, enabled me
to see those details, and also discovered me to her. I asked politely
if I spoke to Madame Felix, the wife of M. Felix of the Chamber of
Accounts.
    "I am Madame Felix," she answered, advancing slowly toward me. "My
husband is late. Do you come from him? It is not bad news, Monsieur?"
    The tone of anxiety in which she uttered her last question, and the
quickness with which she raised her lamp to scan my face, went to my
heart, already softened by this young mother in her home. I hastened
to answer that I had no bad news, and wished merely to see her husband
on business connected with his employment.
    "He is very late," she said, a shade of perplexity crossing her face.
"I have never known him so late before. Monsieur is unfortunate."
    I replied that with her leave I would wait; on which she very readily
placed a stool for me, and sat down herself by the cradle, I ventured
to remark that perhaps M. Nicholas had detained her husband: she
answered simply that it might be so, but that she had never known it
happen before.
    "M. Felix has evening employment?" I asked after a moment's
reflection.
    She looked at me in some wonder. "No," she said. "He spends his
evenings with me, Monsieur. It is not much, for he is at work all
day."
    I bowed, and was preparing another question, when the sound of
footsteps ascending the stairs in haste reached my ears, and led me to
pause. Madame heard the noise at the same moment and rose. "It is my
husband," she said, looking toward the door with such a light in
her eyes as betrayed the sweetheart lingering in the wife. "I was
afraid—I do not know what I feared," she muttered to herself.
    Proposing to myself the advantage of seeing Felix before he saw me, I
pushed back my stool into the shadow, contriving to do this so
discreetly that the young woman noticed nothing. A moment later it
appeared I might have spared my pains; for at sight of her husband, a
comely young man who came in with lack-lustre eye and drooping head,
she sprang forward with a cry of dismay, and, utterly forgetting my
presence, appealed to him to know what was the matter.
    He threw himself on to a stool, the first he reached, and, leaning his
elbows on the table in an attitude of extreme dejection, covered his
face with his hands. "What is it?" he said in a hollow tone. "We are
ruined, Margot. I have no more work. I am dismissed."
    "Dismissed?" she ejaculated.
    He nodded. "Nicholas discharged me this morning," he said, almost in a
whisper. He dared not speak louder, for he could not command his
voice.
    "Why?" she asked gently, as she leant over him. "What had you done?"
    "Nothing!" he answered with bitterness. "He said clerks were
plentiful, and the King or I must starve."
    Hitherto I had witnessed the scene in silence, a prey to emotions so
various I will not attempt to describe them. But hearing the King's
name thus prostituted and put to base uses, I started forward with a
violence which in a moment made my presence known. Felix, confounded
by the sight of a stranger at his elbow, rose hurriedly from his seat,
and retreating before me with vivid alarm painted on his countenance,
asked with a faltering tongue who I was.
    I replied in as soothing a manner as possible, that I was a friend,
anxious to assist him. Nevertheless, seeing that I kept my cloak about
my face—for I was not willing to be recognized—he continued to look
at me with distrust and terror. "What do you want?" he said, raising
the lamp much as his wife had done, to see me the better.
    "The answers to one or two questions," I replied firmly. "Answer them
truly, and I promise you your troubles are at an end." So saying, I
drew from my pouch the scrap of paper which had come to me so
strangely. "When did you write this, my friend?" I continued, placing
it before him.
    He drew a deep breath at sight of it, and a look of comprehension and
dismay crossed his