t their best advantage; and they have studied their
attitudes, sometimes modest, Sometimes haughty.

What could one say about this one? She was at home and alone. Yes, she
was alone, for she was smiling as one smiles when thinking in solitude
of something sad or sweet, and not as one smiles when one is being
watched. She seemed so much alone and so much at home that she made
the whole large apartment seem absolutely empty. She alone lived in it,
filled it, gave it life. Many people might come in and converse, laugh,
even sing; she would still be alone with a solitary smile, and she alone
would give it life with her pictured gaze.

That look also was unique. It fell directly on me, fixed and caressing,
without seeing me. All portraits know that they are being watched, and
they answer with their eyes, which see, think, follow us without leaving
us, from the very moment we enter the apartment they inhabit. This one
did not see me; it saw nothing, although its look was fixed directly on
me. I remembered the surprising verse of Baudelaire:

And your eyes, attractive as those of a portrait.

They did indeed attract me in an irresistible manner; those painted eyes
which had lived, or which were perhaps still living, threw over me a
strange, powerful spell. Oh, what an infinite and tender charm, like a
passing breeze, like a dying sunset of lilac rose and blue, a little sad
like the approaching night, which comes behind the sombre frame and out
of those impenetrable eyes! Those eyes, created by a few strokes from a
brush, hide behind them the mystery of that which seems to be and which
does not exist, which can appear in the eyes of a woman, which can make
love blossom within us.

The door opened and M. Milial entered. He excused himself for being
late. I excused myself for being ahead of time. Then I said: "Might I
ask you who is this lady?"

He answered: "That is my mother. She died very young."

Then I understood whence came the inexplicable attraction of this man.

THE DRUNKARD

The north wind was blowing a hurricane, driving through the sky big,
black, heavy clouds from which the rain poured down on the earth with
terrific violence.

A high sea was raging and dashing its huge, slow, foamy waves along the
coast with the rumbling sound of thunder. The waves followed each other
close, rolling in as high as mountains, scattering the foam as they
broke.

The storm engulfed itself in the little valley of Yport