"Why do they continue to fire, General, when I have given orders to
hoist the white flag?"

The aide-de-camp left the apartment, shutting the door behind him, and
Delaherche never knew what was the General's answer. The vision had
faded from his sight.

ALPHONSE DAUDET

Born in 1840, died in 1897; educated at Lyons; settled in
Paris in 1857 and began to write poems and sketches for
newspapers and periodicals; his "Fromont Jeune et Risler
Aine" published in 1874, "Jack" in 1876, "Numa Roumestan" in
1881, "Tartarin sur les Alps" in 1885; author of many other
works of fiction.

I

A GREAT MAN'S WIDOW[10]

No one was astonished at hearing she was going to marry again.
Notwithstanding all his genius, perhaps even on account of his genius,
the great man had for fifteen years led her a hard life, full of
caprices and mad freaks that had attracted the attention of all Paris.
On the highroad to fame, over which he had so triumphantly and
hurriedly traveled, like those who are to die young, she had sat
behind him, humbly and timidly, in a corner of the chariot, ever
fearful of collisions. Whenever she complained, relatives, friends,
every one was against her: "Respect his weaknesses," they would say to
her, "they are the weaknesses of a god. Do not disturb him, do not
worry him. Remember that your husband does not belong exclusively to
you. He belongs much more to art, to his country, than to his family.
And who knows if each of the faults you reproach him with has not
given us some sublime creation?" At last, however, her patience was
worn out, she rebelled, became indignant and even unjust, so much,
indeed, that at the moment of the great man's death, they were on the
point of demanding a judicial separation and ready to see their great
and celebrated name dragged into the columns of a society paper.

[Footnote 10: From "Artists' Wives." Translated by Laura Enser.]

After the agitation of this unhappy match, the anxieties of the last
illness, and the sudden death which for a moment revived her former
affection, the first months of her widowhood acted on the young woman
like a healthy calming water-cure. The enforced retirement, the quiet
charm of mitigated sorrow lent to her thirty-five years a second youth
almost as attractive as the first.

Moreover, black suited her, and then she had the responsible and
rather proud look of a woman left alone in life, with all the w