s. I tried to
call her back. But her glance, like that of a beaten dog, shrank from
me. I had a few potatoes, and a little butter. I mashed them to a pulp
with a wooden spoon, and placed it in a bowl at some distance from the
crouching Assumption. Then I lighted my pipe.

At the end of an hour the poor creature began to move. She put one arm
forward, then the other, and then a knee. I thought she was directing
her attention toward the food in order to eat. But to my astonishment,
I saw her crawl on hands and knees toward a corner of the room, where
I had left a few flowers lying. She rose up quickly, and with a sudden
movement seized them.

* * * * *

It was perhaps a hundred and fifty years after this adventure
occurred, that I met Assumption again. At least I was convinced that
it was she. It was in Bordeaux at the _Restaurant du Perou_. She
was drying the glass of a gloomy student who had not found it clean
enough.

THE PARADISE OF BEASTS

Once on a rainy midnight a poor old horse, harnessed to a cab, was
drowsing in front of a dingy restaurant from whence came the laughter
of women and young people.

And the poor spiritless animal with drooping head and shaking limbs
made a sorry spectacle, as he stood there waiting the pleasure of the
roisterers, that would at last permit him to go home to his reeking
stable.

Half asleep, the horse heard the coarse jokes of these men and women.
He had long since grown painfully accustomed to it. His poor brain
understood that there was no difference between the monotonous
unchanging screech of a turning wheel and the shrill voice of a
prostitute.

And this evening he dreamed vaguely of the time when he had been a
little colt that had gamboled on a smooth field, quite pink amid the
green grass, and how his mother had given him to suck.

Suddenly he fell stone dead on the slippery pavement.

He reached the gate of heaven. A great scholar, who was waiting for
St. Peter to come and open the gate, said to the horse:

"What are you doing here? You have no right to enter heaven. I have
the right because I was born of a woman."

And the poor horse answered:

"My mother was a gentle mare. She died in her old age with her blood
sucked out by leeches. I have come to ask the _Bon Dieu_ if she is
here."

Then the gate of Heaven was opened to the two who knocked upon it, and
the Paradise of animals appeared.

And the old horse recogni