the old woman and said: "Aha! mamma; you are
better to-day. Oh! I never had any doubt but you would come round again;
in fact, I said to myself as I was mounting the staircase, 'I have an
idea that I shall find the old lady on her feet once more';" and as he
patted her gently on the back: "Ah! she is as solid as the Pont-Neuf,
she will bury us all; see if she does not."

He sat down, accepted the coffee that was offered him, and soon began
to join in the conversation of the two men, backing up Braux, for he
himself had been mixed up in the Commune.

The old woman, now feeling herself fatigued, wished to retire. Caravan
rushed forward. She looked him steadily in the eye and said: "You,
you must carry my clock and chest of drawers upstairs again without a
moment's delay." "Yes, mamma," he replied, gasping; "yes, I will do so."
The old woman then took the arm of her daughter and withdrew from
the room. The two Caravans remained astounded, silent, plunged in the
deepest despair, while Braux rubbed his hands and sipped his coffee
gleefully.

Suddenly Madame Caravan, consumed with rage, rushed at him, exclaiming:
"You are a thief, a footpad, a cur! I would spit in your face! I--I
--would----" She could find nothing further to say, suffocating as she
was with rage, while he went on sipping his coffee with a smile.

His wife returning just then, Madame Caravan attacked her sister-in-law,
and the two women--the one with her enormous bulk, the other epileptic
and spare, with changed voices and trembling hands flew at one another
with words of abuse.

Chenet and Braux now interposed, and the latter, taking his better half
by the shoulders, pushed her out of the door before him, shouting: "Go
on, you slut; you talk too much;" and the two were heard in the street
quarrelling until they disappeared from sight.

M. Chenet also took his departure, leaving the Caravans alone, face
to face. The husband fell back on his chair, and with the cold sweat
standing out in beads on his temples, murmured: "What shall I say to my
chief to-morrow?"

BESIDE SCHOPENHAUER'S CORPSE

He was slowly dying, as consumptives die. I saw him each day, about two
o'clock, sitting beneath the hotel windows on a bench in the promenade,
looking out on the calm sea. He remained for some time without moving,
in the heat of the sun, gazing mournfully at the Mediterranean. Every
now and then, he cast a glance at the lofty mountains with beclouded
summit