Chapter 1
_ CHAPTER I
THE ASPIRATIONS OF JEAN SERVIEN
BY ANATOLE FRANCE
A TRANSLATION BY ALFRED ALLINSON
Chapter I
Jean Servien was born in a back-shop in the _Rue Notre-Dame des Champs_. His father was a bookbinder and worked for the Religious Houses. Jean was a little weakling child, and his mother nursed him at her breast as she sewed the books, sheet by sheet, with the curved needle of the trade. One day as she was crossing the shop, humming a song, in the words of which she found expression for the vague, splendid visions of her maternal ambition, her foot slipped on the boards, which were moist with paste.
Instinctively she threw up her arm to guard the child she held clasped to her bosom, and struck her breast, thus exposed, a severe blow against the corner of the iron press. She felt no very acute pain at the time, but later on an abscess formed, which got well, but presently reopened, and a low fever supervened that confined her to her bed.
There, in the lo

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