ing again."

He got up, choking, took my hands and kissed them as if they had
belonged to a prince, cried, nearly fainted, embraced Rivet and even
kissed Madame Morin, who gave him such a push as to send him staggering
back into his chair, but he never got over the blow: his mind had been
too much upset. In all the country round, moreover, he was called
nothing but, "that pig of a Morin," and that epithet went through him
like a sword thrust every time he heard it. When a street boy called
after him: "Pig!" he turned his head instinctively. His friends also
overwhelmed him with horrible jokes, and used to ask him, whenever they
were eating ham: "It's a bit of you?" He died two years later.

As for myself, when I was a candidate for the Chamber of Deputies in
1875, I called on the new notary at Fouserre, Monsieur Belloncle, to
solicit his vote, and a tall, handsome and evidently wealthy lady
received me. "You do not know me again?" she said. And I stammered out:
"But ... no Madame." "Henriette Bonnel." "Ah!" And I felt myself turning
pale, while she seemed perfectly at her ease, and looked at me with a
smile.

As soon as she had left me alone with her husband, he took both my
hands, and squeezing them as if he meant to crush them, he said: "I have
been intending to go and see you for a long time, my dear sir, for my
wife has very often talked to me about you. I know ... yes, I know under
what painful circumstances you made her acquaintance, and I know also
how perfectly you behaved, how full of delicacy, tact and devotion you
showed yourself in the affair...." He hesitated, and then said in a
lower tone, as if he had been saying something low and coarse.... "In
the affair of that pig of a Morin."

THE WOODEN SHOES

The old priest was sputtering out the last words of his sermon over the
white caps of the peasant women, and the rough or pomatumed heads of the
men. The large baskets of the farmer's wives who had come from a
distance to attend mass, were on the ground beside them, and the heavy
heat of a July day caused them all to exhale a smell like that of
cattle, or of a flock of sheep, and the cocks could be heard crowing
through the large west door, which was wide open, as well as the lowing
of the cows in a neighboring field.... "As God wishes. Amen!" the priest
said. Then he ceased, opened a book, and, as he did every week, he began
to give notice of all the small parish events for the following week. He