named
Simon.”
The
urchins
began
laughing.
The lad
triumphantly
lifted up
his voice:
“You can
see
plainly
that he
has no
papa.” A
deep
silence
ensued.
The
children
were
dumfounded
by this
extraordinary,
impossibly
monstrous
thing – a
boy who
had not a
papa; they
looked
upon him
as a
phenomenon,
an
unnatural
being, and
they felt
rising in
them the
hitherto
inexplicable
pity of
their
mothers
for La
Blanchotte.
As for
Simon, he
