enetrated my ears.

I felt myself suffocating under the weight that was crushing me and
preventing me from moving. I stretched out my hand to find out what
was the nature of this object. I felt a face, a nose, and whiskers.
Then with all my strength I launched out a blow over this face. But I
immediately received a hail of cuffings which made me jump straight
out of the soaked sheets, and rush in my night shirt into the
corridor, the door of which I found open.

O stupor! it was broad daylight. The noise brought my friends hurrying
into the apartment, and we found, sprawling over my improvised bed,
the dismayed valet, who, while bringing me my morning cup of tea, had
tripped over this obstacle in the middle of the floor, and fallen on
his stomach, spilling, in spite of himself, my breakfast over my face.

The precautions I had taken in closing the shutters and going to sleep
in the middle of the room had only brought about the interlude I had
been striving to avoid.

Ah! how they all laughed that day!

A WARNING NOTE

I have received the following letter. Thinking that it may be
profitable to many readers, I make it my business to communicate it to
them:

"Paris, November 15th, 1886.

"Monsieur,--You often treat either in the shape of short stories or
chronicles, of subjects which have relation to what I may describe as
'current morals.' I am going to submit to you some reflections which
ought, it seems to me, to furnish you with the materials for one of
your tales.

"I am not married; I am a bachelor, and, as it seems to me, a rather
simple man. But I fancy that many men, the greater part of men, are
simple in the way that I am. As I am always, or nearly always, a plain
dealer, I am not well able to see through the natural cunning of my
neighbors, and I go straight ahead, with my eyes open, without
sufficiently looking out for what is behind things and behind people's
external behavior.

"We are nearly all accustomed, as a rule, to take appearances for
realities, and to look on people as what they pretend to be; and very
few possess that scent which enables certain men to divine the real
and hidden nature of others. From this peculiar and conventional
method of regarding life come the result that we pass, like moles,
through the midst of events; and that we never believe in what is, but
in what seems to be, that we declare a thing to be improbable as soon
as we are shown the fact behind the veil,