fice that he made for her, he
embraced her more fondly every day. For he did embrace her. She was no
longer his servant. When once she stood before him at the table, calling
him "Monsieur," and so respectful in her bearing, he could not stand it,
but seizing her by her two hands, he said to her, eagerly:

"First embrace me, and then sit down and do me the pleasure of speaking
familiarly, confound it!"

And so to-day it is accomplished. Meeting a child has saved that man
from an ignominious age.

He has substituted for his old vices a young passion. He adores the
little lame girl who skips around him in his room, which is comfortable
and well furnished.

He has already taught Pierette to read, and, moreover, recalling his
calligraphy as a sergeant-major, he has set her copies in writing. It is
his greatest joy when the child, bending attentively over her paper, and
sometimes making a blot which she quickly licks up with her tongue, has
succeeded in copying all the letters of an interminable adverb in
_ment_. His uneasiness is in thinking that he is growing old and has
nothing to leave his adopted child.

And so he becomes almost a miser; he theorizes; he wishes to give up his
tobacco, although Pierette herself fills and lights his pipe for him. He
counts on saving from his slender income enough to purchase a little
stock of fancy goods. Then when he is dead she can live an obscure and
tranquil life, hanging up somewhere in the back room of the small shop
an old cross of the Legion of Honor, her souvenir of the Captain.

Every day he goes to walk with her on the rampart. Sometimes they are
passed by folks who are strangers in the village, who look with
compassionate surprise at the old soldier, spared from the wars, and the
poor lame child. And he is moved--oh, so pleasantly, almost to
tears--when one of the passers-by whispers, as they pass:

"Poor father! Yet how pretty his daughter is."

[Illustration]

TWO CLOWNS.

[Illustration: TWO CLOWNS]

The night was clear and glittering with stars, and there was a crowd
upon the market-place. They crowded in gaping delight around the tent of
some strolling acrobats, where red and smoking lanterns lighted the
performance which was just beginning. Rolling their muscular limbs in
dirty wraps, and decorated from head to foot with tawdry ruffles of fur,
the athletes--four boyish ruffians with vulgar heads--were ranged in
line before the painted canvas which rep