ou look without emotion upon his sunken flanks, and upon two
bones which stick out on each side of his belly. His coat is roughened
by the sweat which has repeatedly come out and dried upon him, and
which, no less than the dust, has made him gummy, sticky and shaggy.
The horse looks like a wrathy porcupine: you are afraid he will be
foundered, and you caress him with the whip-lash in a melancholy way
that he perfectly understands, for he moves his head about like an
omnibus horse, tired of his deplorable existence.

You think a good deal of this horse; your consider him an excellent
one and he cost you twelve hundred francs. When a man has the honor of
being the father of a family, he thinks as much of twelve hundred
francs as you think of this horse. You see at once the frightful
amount of your extra expenses, in case Coco should have to lie by. For
two days you will have to take hackney coaches to go to your business.
You wife will pout if she can't go out: but she will go out, and take
a carriage. The horse will cause the purchase of numerous extras,
which you will find in your coachman's bill,--your only coachman, a
model coachman, whom you watch as you do a model anybody.

To these thoughts you give expression in the gentle movement of the
whip as it falls upon the animal's ribs, up to his knees in the black
dust which lines the road in front of La Verrerie.

At this moment, little Adolphe, who doesn't know what to do in this
rolling box, has sadly twisted himself up into a corner, and his
grandmother anxiously asks him, "What is the matter?"

"I'm hungry," says the child.

"He's hungry," says the mother to her daughter.

"And why shouldn't he be hungry? It is half-past five, we are not at
the barrier, and we started at two!"

"Your husband might have treated us to dinner in the country."

"He'd rather make his horse go a couple of leagues further, and get
back to the house."

"The cook might have had the day to herself. But Adolphe is right,
after all: it's cheaper to dine at home," adds the mother-in-law.

"Adolphe," exclaims your wife, stimulated by the word "cheaper," "we
go so slow that I shall be seasick, and you keep driving right in this
nasty dust. What are you thinking of? My gown and hat will be ruined!"

"Would you rather ruin the horse?" you ask, with the air of a man who
can't be answered.

"Oh, no matter for your horse; just think of your son who is dying of
hunger: he hasn't tasted a t