ieur de Courcils went up to him, and I thought
they were going to collar each other. There they stood, both of them
tall, one stout and the other thin, both trembling. My mother's husband
stammered out: 'You are a worthless wretch!' And the other replied in a
loud, dry voice: 'We will meet somewhere else, monsieur. I should have
already slapped your ugly face, and challenged you a long time ago, if I
had not, before everything else, thought of the peace of mind of that
poor woman whom you made suffer so much during her lifetime.'

"Then, turning to me, he said: 'You are my son; will you come with me? I
have no right to take you away, but I shall assume it, if you will
kindly come with me.' I shook his hand without replying, and we went out
together; I was certainly three parts mad.

"Two days later Monsieur de Bourneval killed Monsieur de Courcils in a
duel. My brothers, fearing some terrible scandal, held their tongues,
and I offered them, and they accepted, half the fortune which my mother
had left me. I took my real father's name, renouncing that which the law
gave me, but which was not really mine. Monsieur de Bourneval died three
years afterwards, and I have not consoled myself yet."

He rose from his chair, walked up and down the room, and, standing in
front of me, he said:

"Well, I say that my mother's will was one of the most beautiful and
loyal, as well as one of the grandest acts that a woman could perform.
Do you not think so?"

I gave him both my hands:

"Most certainly I do, my friend."

A COUNTRY EXCURSION

For five months they had been talking of going to lunch at some country
restaurant in the neighborhood of Paris, on Madame Dufour's birthday,
and as they were looking forward very impatiently to the outing, they
had got up very early that morning. Monsieur Dufour had borrowed the
milkman's tilted cart, and drove himself. It was a very tidy,
two-wheeled conveyance, with a hood, and in it the wife, resplendent in
a wonderful, sherry-colored, silk dress, sat by the side of her husband.

The old grandmother and a girl were accommodated with two chairs, and a
boy with yellow hair was lying at the bottom of the trap, of whom
however, nothing was to be seen except his head.

When they got to the bridge of Neuilly, Monsieur Dufour said: "Here we
are in the country at last!" and at that signal, his wife had grown
sentimental about the beauties of nature. When they got to the cross
roads at C