ir
unromantic rigidity; but once outside, it took its revenge for that
inexorable profession. The exercise of walking and familiarity with a
route of which he knew by heart the most trivial details, gave entire
liberty to his imaginative faculties, and he invented extraordinary
adventures, ample material for twenty newspaper novels.

Suppose, for example, that M. Joyeuse were walking through Faubourg
Saint-Honore, on the right hand sidewalk--he always chose that
side--and espied a heavy laundress's cart going along at a smart trot,
driven by a countrywoman whose child, perched on a bundle of linen, was
leaning over the side.

"The child!" the good man would exclaim in dismay, "look out for the
child!"

His voice would be lost in the clatter of the wheels and his warning in
the secret design of Providence. The cart would pass on. He would look
after it for a moment, then go his way; but the drama begun in his mind
would go on unfolding itself there with numberless sudden changes. The
child had fallen. The wheels were just about to pass over him. M.
Joyeuse would dart forward, save the little creature on the very brink
of death, but the shaft would strike himself full in the breast, and he
would fall, bathed in his blood. Thereupon he would see himself carried
to the druggist's amid the crowd that had collected. They would place
him on a litter and carry him home, then suddenly he would hear the
heart-rending cry of his daughters, his beloved daughters, upon seeing
him in that condition. And that cry would go so straight to his heart,
he would hear it so distinctly, so vividly: "Papa, dear papa!" that he
would repeat it himself in the street, to the great surprise of the
passers-by, in a hoarse voice which would wake him from his
manufactured nightmare.

Would you like another instance of the vagaries of that prodigious
imagination? It rains, it hails; beastly weather. M. Joyeuse has taken
the omnibus to go to his office. As he takes his seat opposite a
species of giant, with brutish face and formidable biceps, M. Joyeuse,
an insignificant little creature, with his bag on his knees, draws in
his legs to make room for the enormous pillars that support his
neighbor's monumental trunk. In the jolting of the vehicle and the
pattering of the rain on the windows, M. Joyeuse begins to dream. And
suddenly the colossus opposite, who has a good-natured face enough, is
amazed to see the little man change color and glare at him