to carry you off, and we shall both be arrested; please get in!"

She got in, frightened and bewildered, and he sat down by her side,
saying to the cabman: "Rue de Provence."

But suddenly she exclaimed: "Good heavens! I have forgotten a very
important telegram; please drive to the nearest telegraph office first
of all."

The cab stopped a little farther on, in the Rue de Chateaudun, and she
said to the Baron: "Would you kindly get me a fifty centimes telegraph
form? I promised my husband to invite Martelet to dinner to-morrow, and
had quite forgotten it."

When the Baron returned and gave her the blue telegraph form, she wrote
in pencil:

"My Dear Friend: I am not at all well. I am suffering terribly from
neuralgia, which keeps me in bed. Impossible to go out. Come and
dine to-morrow night, so that I may obtain my pardon.

"JEANNE."

She wetted the gum, fastened it carefully, and addressed it to:
"Viscount de Martelet, 240 Rue Miromesnil," and then, giving it back to
the Baron, she said: "Now, will you be kind enough to throw this into
the telegram box."

AN ADVENTURE

"Come! Come!" Pierre Dufaille said, shrugging his shoulders. "What are
you talking about, when you say that there are no more adventures? Say
that there are no more adventurous men, and you will be right! Yes,
nobody ventures to trust to chance, in these days, for as soon as there
is any slight mystery, or a spice of danger, they draw back. If,
however, a man is willing to go into them blindly, and to run the risk
of anything that may happen, he can still meet with adventures, and even
I, who never look for them, met with one in my life, and a very
startling one; let me tell you.

"I was staying in Florence, and was living very quietly, and all I
indulged in, in the way of adventures, was to listen occasionally to the
immoral proposals with which every stranger is beset at night on the
_Piazzo de la Signoria_, by some worthy Pandarus or other, with a head
like that of a venerable priest. These excellent fellows generally
introduce you to their families, where debauchery is carried on in a
very simple, and almost patriarchal fashion, and where one does not run
the slightest risk.

"One day as I was admiring Benvenuto Cellini's wonderful Perseus, in
front of the _Loggia del Lanzi_, I suddenly felt my sleeve pulled
somewhat roughly, and on turning round, I found myself face to face with
a woman of about fifty, who