by both, etc., and all the honeyed words suggested by a cunning authorized by love. She wept, and wept well: the fire lit up her tears and a face beautified by sorrow.

M. de Cosmelly did not say a word and went out. Men caught in the snare of their faults dislike making an offering of their remorse to clemency. If he went to Fanfarlo’s he would doubtless find traces of disorder, cigar ends, and newspapers.

One morning Samuel was awakened by the roguish voice of Fanfarlo, and slowly raised his tired head from the pillow where it was resting to read a letter which she handed to him.

‘Thanks, monsieur, a thousand thanks; my happiness and gratitude will be noted to your credit in a better world. I accept. I am taking back my husband from your hands and am carrying him off this evening to our estate at C—, where I am going to recover the health and the life I owe to you. Receive, monsieur, the promise of an eternal friendship. I have always believed you to be too fine a man not to prefer one more friendship to any other reward.’

Samuel, wallowing in lace, and leaning over one of the coolest and most beautiful shoulders it is possible to see, felt vaguely that he was tricked, and had some difficulty in marshalling in his memory the elements of the plot, the dénouement of which he had brought about; but he said to himself quietly:

‘Are our passions really sincere? Who can know with certainty what he wants, and know exactly the barometer of his heart?’

‘What’s that you’re muttering? What is it? I want to see,’ said Fanfarlo.

‘Oh, nothing,’ said Samuel. ‘A letter from a nice woman to whom I promised that I’d make you love me.’

‘I’ll make you pay for that,’ she hissed.

It is probable that Fanfarlo loved Samuel, but with that love known to so few souls, with spite at the bottom of it. As for him, he had been punished where he sinned. He had so often aped passion, he was forced to know it; but it was not the tranquil, calm and strong love that decent girls inspire, it was the terrible, desolating and shameful love, the sickly love of the courtesan. Samuel knew all the tortures of jealousy, and the degradation and sadness into which we are cast by the consciousness of an incurable, constitutional malady; in short, all the horrors of that vicious marriage which is called concubinage. As for her, she is getting stouter every day; she has become a plump, fresh, shining, and artful beauty, a sort of ministerial tart. One of these days she will take the Easter Communion and will hand out the consecrated bread to the parish. At that period perhaps, Samuel, killed by hard labour, will be nailed down by the planks, as he used to say in the good old days, and Fanfarlo, looking like a canoness, will turn the head of some young heir. Meantime she is learning how to have children; she has just been happily delivered of twins. Samuel has given birth to four learned books: a book on the four evangelists, another on the symbolism of colours, a memoir on a new advertising system, and a fourth, the title of which I do not wish to remember. The most frightful thing about the last one is that it is full of verve, energy, and curiosities. Samuel had the nerve to give it the epigraph: Auri sacra fames! Fanfarlo wants her husband to get into the Academy, and she is intriguing at the Ministry to procure him the cross.

Poor singer of the Ospreys! Poor Manuela de Monteverde! He has fallen very low. I recently learned that he was founding a socialist newspaper, trying to enter politics. Intellectually dishonest! to quote that honest man, M. Nisard.