ith him this evening? I suppose he is sleepy?"

"He has been like that all the time that you were away; I have never
been able to have him in bed with me once."

In the morning the child woke up and began to laugh and play with his
toys.

The lawyer, who was an affectionate man, got up, kissed his offspring,
and took him into his arms to carry him to their bed. Andrew laughed,
with that vacant laugh of little creatures whose ideas are still vague.
He suddenly saw the bed and his mother in it, and his happy little face
puckered up, till suddenly he began to scream furiously, and struggled
as if he were going to be put to the torture.

In his astonishment his father said:

"There must be something the matter with the child," and mechanically he
lifted up his little nightshirt.

He uttered a prolonged "O--o--h!" of astonishment. The child's calves,
thighs, and buttocks were covered with blue spots as big as halfpennies.

"Just look, Matilda!" the father exclaimed; "this is horrible!" And the
mother rushed forward in a fright. It was horrible; no doubt the
beginning of some sort of leprosy, of one of those strange affections of
the skin which doctors are often at a loss to account for.

The parents looked at one another in consternation.

"We must send for the doctor," the father said.

But Matilda, pale as death, was looking at her child, who was spotted
like a leopard. Then suddenly uttering a violent cry, as if she had seen
something that filled her with horror, she exclaimed:

"Oh! the wretch!"

In his astonishment M. Moreau asked: "What are you talking about? What
wretch?"

She got red up to the roots of her hair, and stammered:

"Oh, nothing! but I think I can guess--it must be--we ought to send for
the doctor ... it must be that wretch of a nurse who has been pinching
the poor child to make him keep quiet when he cries."

In his rage the lawyer sent for the nurse, and very nearly beat her.
She denied it most impudently, but was instantly dismissed, and the
Municipality having been informed of her conduct, she will find it a
hard matter to get another situation.

MY LANDLADY

At that time (George Kervelen said) I was living in furnished lodgings
in the Rue des Saints-Peres.

When my father had made up his mind that I should go to Paris to
continue my law studies, there had been a long discussion about settling
everything. My allowance had been fixed at first at two thousand five
hundred