g on the stairs as he
ran away; so I dressed hastily in the dark and went downstairs, still
shouting.

"In the hall below, where I could see through the upper windows that the
dawn was breaking, I met the broad-shouldered footman, who was holding a
great cudgel in his hand. He was bawling also, in Breton, and pointed to
the open door, outside where my dog was waiting. What could I say to
this savage who did not speak French? Should I face his cudgel? There
was no reason for doing so; and besides, I was even more ashamed than
furious; so I hastily took up my gun and my game-bag, which were in the
hall, and went off without turning round.

"Disgusted with sport in that part of the country, I returned to Brest
the same day, and there, timidly and with many precautions, I tried to
find out something about the little old man....

"'Oh, I know!' somebody replied at last to my question; 'you are
speaking of the manor-house at Hervenidozse, where the old countess
lives, who dresses like a man and sleeps with her coachman.'

"And with a deep sigh of relief, and much to the astonishment of my
informant, I replied:

"'Oh! so much the better!'"

JEROBOAM

Anyone who said, or even insinuated, that the Reverend William
Greenfield, Vicar of St. Sampson's, Tottenham, did not make his wife
Anna perfectly happy, would certainly have been very malicious. In their
twelve years of married life, he had honored her with twelve children,
and could anybody decently ask anything more of a saintly man?

Saintly to heroism in truth! For his wife Anna, who was endowed with
invaluable virtues, which made her a model among wives and a paragon
among mothers, had not been equally endowed physically, for, in one
word, she was hideous. Her hair, which was coarse though it was thin,
was the color of the national _half-and-half_, but of thick
_half-and-half_ which looked as if it had been already swallowed several
times, and her complexion, which was muddy and pimply, looked as if it
were covered with sand mixed with brickdust. Her teeth, which were long
and protruding, seemed as if they were about to start out of their
sockets in order to escape from that mouth with scarcely any lips, whose
sulphurous breath had turned them yellow. They were evidently suffering
from bile.

Her china-blue eyes looked vaguely, one very much to the right and the
other very much to the left, with a divergent and frightened squint; no
doubt in order that th