ited again, he went on with the slow and obstinate logic
of a drunkard:

"He's been keeping me at that loafer Paumelle's place every night, so as
to stop my going home. It's some trick. Oh, you damned carrion!"

Slowly he got on his knees. A blind fury was gaining possession of him,
mingling with the fumes of alcohol.

He continued:

"Tell me who it was, Melina, or you'll get a licking--I warn you!"

He was now standing, trembling with a wild fury, as though the alcohol
had set his blood on fire. He took a step, knocked against a chair,
seized it, went on, reached the bed, ran his hands over it and felt the
warm body of his wife.

Then, maddened, he roared:

"So! You were there, you piece of dirt, and you wouldn't answer!"

And, lifting the chair, which he was holding in his strong sailor's
grip, he swung it down before him with an exasperated fury. A cry burst
from the bed, an agonizing, piercing cry. Then he began to thrash around
like a thresher in a barn. And soon nothing more moved. The chair was
broken to pieces, but he still held one leg and beat away with it,
panting.

At last he stopped to ask:

"Well, are you ready to tell me who it was?"

Melina did not answer.

Then tired out, stupefied from his exertion, he stretched himself out on
the ground and slept.

When day came a neighbor, seeing the door open, entered. He saw Jeremie
snoring on the floor, amid the broken pieces of a chair, and on the bed
a pulp of flesh and blood.

THE WARDROBE

As we sat chatting after dinner, a party of men, the conversation turned
on women, for lack of something else.

One of us said:

"Here's a funny thing that happened to me on, that very subject." And he
told us the following story:

One evening last winter I suddenly felt overcome by that overpowering
sense of misery and languor that takes possession of one from time to
time. I was in my own apartment, all alone, and I was convinced that if
I gave in to my feelings I should have a terrible attack of melancholia,
one of those attacks that lead to suicide when they recur too often.

I put on my overcoat and went out without the slightest idea of what I
was going to do. Having gone as far as the boulevards, I began to
wander along by the almost empty cafes. It was raining, a fine rain
that affects your mind as it does your clothing, not one of those good
downpours which come down in torrents, driving breathless passers-by
into doorways, but a rain