the staircase, 'I have an
idea that I shall find the old one on her feet once more;'" and he tapped
her gently on the back: "Ah! she is as solid as the Pont-Neuf, she will
see us all out; you shall 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.

Now, the old woman, feeling herself fatigued, wished to leave the room,
at which Caravan rushed forward. She thereupon fixed him in the eyes and
said to him: "You, you, must carry my clock and chest of drawers up
stairs again without a moment's delay." "Yes, mamma," he replied,
yawning; "yes, I will do so." The old woman then took the arm of her
daughter and withdrew from the room. The two Caravans remained rooted to
the floor, silent, plunged in the deepest despair, while Braux rubbed his
hands and sipped his coffee, gleefully.

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

His wife returning just then, looked menacingly at her sister-in-law, and
both--the one with her enormous fat stomach, the other, epileptic and
spare, voice changed, hands trembling--flew at one another and seized
each other by the throat.

Chenet and Braux now interposed, and the latter taking his better half by
the shoulders pushed her out of the door in front of him, shouting to his
sister-in-law: "Go away, you slut: you are a disgrace to your relations;"
and the two were heard in the street bellowing and shouting at the
Caravans, until after they had disappeared from sight.

M. Chenet also took his departure, leaving the Caravans alone, face to
face. The husband soon 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?"

THE ODALISQUE OF SENICHOU

In Senichou, which is a suburb of Prague, there lived about twenty
years ago, two poor but honest people, who earned their bread by the
sweat of their brow; he worked in a large printing establishment,
and his wife employed her spare time as a laundress. Their pride, and
their only pleasure, was their daughter Viteska, who was a vigorous,
voluptuous-looking, hands