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Updated: June 4, 2025
The police will tell you, as they told Bonaventure, that in these days of steam and steel and yoked lightning a man may get lost and be found again; but that when he stays lost, and is neither dead nor mad, it is because he wants to be lost. So where was to be the gain in finding 'Thanase alive? Oh, much, indeed, to Bonaventure!
'Thanase sees Bonaventure and the curé enter; mortification smites him; a smothered cry of rage bursts from his lips; he tries to hurl his antagonist from him; and just as the two friends reach out to lay hands upon the wrestling mass, it goes with a great thud to the ground.
But at length he had reached the valley, and had lingered here for days; for it happened that a man in bought clothing was there just then, roaming around and hammering pieces off the rocks, who gave 'Thanase the chance to earn a little something from him, with which the hard-marched wanderer might take the train instead of the cross-ties for as far as the pittance would carry him.
Think of Bonaventure, the slender, the intense, the reticent with 'Thanase limping on rude but glorious crutches for four consecutive Saturdays and Sundays up and down in full sight of Zoséphine, savior of her mother from widowhood, owner of two fine captured horses, and rewarded by Sosthène with five acres of virgin prairie.
Once, where two railways parted, one leading south, the other west, he followed the southern for days, and then came back to the point of separation, and by and by found the lost thread again on the more westward road. But the time since 'Thanase had passed was the longest yet. Was it certainly 'Thanase? Yes; the fiddle always settled that question. And had he not got home? He had not come.
Two such men standing at that time must naturally, one would say, have been talking of the strength of the defences around Richmond, or the Emperor Maximilian's operations in Mexico, or Kirby Smith's movements, hardly far enough away to make it seem comfortable. But in reality they were talking about 'Thanase.
The lad had turned toward them, and was sitting upright, his blue eyes widened, his face pale, and his lips apart; but ere Sosthène could speak his wife claimed his attention. "Sosthène!" she exclaimed, pressing against the window-pane, "ah, Sosthène! Ah, ah! they have got 'Thanase!"
And then, instead of 'Thanase coming, Chaouache died. A terror took up its home in the heart of Bonaventure. Every thing he looked upon, every creature that looked upon him, seemed to offer an unuttered accusation. Least of all could he bear the glance of Zoséphine. He did not have to bear it. She kept at home now closely.
In this way 'Thanase and his pretty little jarmaine first cousin Zoséphine, now in her fourteenth year, grew to be well acquainted. For at thirteen, of course, she began to move in society, which meant to join in the contra-dance. 'Thanase did not dance with her, or with any one. She wondered why he did not; but many other girls had similar thoughts about themselves.
He nodded his head in hearty approval as the tale was finished. It was the story of Sosthène, Chaouache, 'Thanase, and the jayhawkers. He gathered up his sabre and walked out, followed by the rest. A rattle of saddles, a splashing of hoofs, and then no sound was heard but the wind and the pouring rain. The short column went out of the village at full gallop.
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