s smiling and
waving her hands to him. A little girl, standing beside her, was jumping
for joy, and two young boys were eagerly watching the drum and the gun,
which were passing from the car into their father's hands.

When the cripple was on the ground, all the children kissed him. Then
they set off, the little girl holding in her hand the small varnished
rung of a crutch, just as she might walk beside her big friend and hold
his thumb.

A STROLL

When Old Man Leras, bookkeeper for Messieurs Labuze and Company, left
the store, he stood for a minute bewildered at the glory of the setting
sun. He had worked all day in the yellow light of a small jet of gas,
far in the back of the store, on a narrow court, as deep as a well. The
little room where he had been spending his days for forty years was
so dark that even in the middle of summer one could hardly see without
gaslight from eleven until three.

It was always damp and cold, and from this hole on which his window
opened came the musty odor of a sewer.

For forty years Monsieur Leras had been arriving every morning in this
prison at eight o'clock, and he would remain there until seven at night,
bending over his books, writing with the industry of a good clerk.

He was now making three thousand francs a year, having started at
fifteen hundred. He had remained a bachelor, as his means did not allow
him the luxury of a wife, and as he had never enjoyed anything, he
desired nothing. From time to time, however, tired of this continuous
and monotonous work, he formed a platonic wish: "Gad! If I only had an
income of fifteen thousand francs, I would take life easy."

He had never taken life easy, as he had never had anything but his
monthly salary. His life had been uneventful, without emotions, without
hopes. The faculty of dreaming with which every one is blessed had never
developed in the mediocrity of his ambitions.

When he was twenty-one he entered the employ of Messieurs Labuze and
Company. And he had never left them.

In 1856 he had lost his father and then his mother in 1859. Since then
the only incident in his life was when he moved, in 1868, because his
landlord had tried to raise his rent.

Every day his alarm clock, with a frightful noise of rattling chains,
made him spring out of bed at 6 o'clock precisely.

Twice, however, this piece of mechanism had been out of order--once in
1866 and again in 1874; he had never been able to find out the reas