‘If you came here oftener I would try and remember them, but it would take time. You have your occupation in Paris, and I have my work here. Don’t let’s be too late; to-morrow I must be up at sunrise.’

XII. Father Dodu

I was about to reply by throwing myself at her feet and offering her my uncle’s house which I could still buy back, for there had been several heirs and the little estate was as yet undivided, but unhappily we had arrived at Loisy, where supper was being delayed for us. Onion soup proclaimed itself before we entered, and some of the neighbours had been invited to celebrate the day after the festival. I recognized Father Dodu at once, the old woodman who used to tell stories by the fire in the evenings. In his time, Father Dodu had been a shepherd, a messenger, a gamekeeper, a fisherman, and even a poacher, and in his leisure moments he made cuckoo clocks and turnspits. His present occupation was to show Ermenonville to the English, taking them to all the places where Rousseau had sat in meditation, and telling them about the philosopher’s last days. It was Father Dodu who, as a little boy, had been employed by him to sort out his plants, and he had gathered the hemlock whose juice was to be squeezed into his cup of coffee. The innkeeper of the Golden Cross would never believe this last detail and consequently the old woodman had always hated him. It had long been grudgingly admitted that Father Dodu possessed several quite innocent secrets, such as curing sick cows by reciting a verse of the Scriptures backwards, and making the sign of the cross with the left foot. But he always disowned them, declaring that, thanks to the memory of his conversations with Jean-Jacques, he had long since abandoned superstitions.

‘Have you come here, little Parisian, to corrupt our girls?

‘I, Father Dodu?’

‘You take them into the woods when the wolf’s not there!’

‘You are the wolf, Father Dodu.’

‘I was, as long as I could find any sheep; now there are only goats and they can defend themselves. You Paris people are a bad lot, and Jean-Jacques was right when he said, “L’homme se corrompt dans l’air empoisonné des villes.”’

‘You know only too well, Father Dodu, that men are corrupt everywhere.’ Whereupon the old man began a drinking-song which he finished in spite of our outcry against a certain filthy verse that we all knew it contained. We besought Sylvie to sing, but she refused, saying that one did not sing at table nowadays.

I had already noticed the youth who had been so attentive to her the night before, for he was sitting on her left, and there was something in his round face and dishevelled hair that was strangely familiar to me. He got up and came round behind my chair; ‘Don’t you recognize me, Parisian?’ And then the woman who had been waiting on us whispered in my ear. ‘Don’t you remember your foster-brother?’

‘Oh, it’s Curly-head, of course,’ I cried, thankful for the timely information, ‘and you pulled me out of the water!’

Sylvie burst out laughing at our meeting, and Curly-head continued, after kissing me, ‘I didn’t know you had a beautiful silver watch in your pocket, and that you were much more anxious at its having stopped than you were about yourself; you said, “The animal’s drowned, he doesn’t go tick-tack any more! Whatever will my uncle say?”

‘So that’s what they tell little children in Paris!’ said Father Dodu. ‘Fancy an animal in a watch!’

I thought Sylvie had forgotten me completely, for she started to go up to her room, saying she was sleepy, but as I kissed her good night she said, ‘Come and see us to-morrow.’