you are happy and well, and promise to be careful, I will
take you. I would be the last person, my dear little wife, to deny you
anything that would give you pleasure." But for some reason Georges was
unhappy, depressed. Some undefined presentiment of evil seems to have
oppressed him. His brother noticed his preoccupation.

He himself alludes to it in writing to his mistress: "I am depressed
this evening. For a very little I could break down altogether and give
way to tears. You can't imagine what horrid thoughts possess me. If I
felt your love close to me, I should be less sad." Against his better
inclination Georges promised to take the widow to the ball on the 13th.
He was to come to Paris on the night of the 12th.

II

THE WOUNDED PIGEON

On the afternoon of January 11, Gaudry called to see the widow. There
had been an accident at the distillery that morning, and work was
suspended for three days. The widow showed Gaudry the bottle containing
the vitriol which her nephew had procured for her use. She was ill,
suffering, she said; the only thing that could make her well again would
be the execution of her revenge on the son of the man who had defrauded
her so wickedly: "Make him suffer, here are the means, and I swear I
will be yours." She dropped a little of the vitriol on to the floor to
show its virulent effect. At first Gaudry was shocked, horrified. He
protested that he was a soldier, that he could not do such a deed; he
suggested that he should provoke the young man to a duel and kill
him. "That is no use," said the widow, always sensitive to social
distinctions; "he is not of your class, he would refuse to fight with
you." Mad with desire for the woman, his senses irritated and excited,
the ultimate gratification of his passion held alluringly before him,
the honest soldier consented to play the cowardly ruffian. The trick was
done. The widow explained to her accomplice his method of proceeding.
The building in the Rue de Boulogne, in which the widow had her
apartment, stood at the end of a drive some twenty-seven and a half
yards long and five and a half yards wide. About half-way up the drive,
on either side, there were two small houses, or pavilions, standing by
themselves and occupied by single gentlemen. The whole was shut off from
the street by a large gate, generally kept closed, in which a smaller
gate served to admit persons going in or out. According to the widow's
plan, the young man, her