where fate holds her
captive.

One night, when the sky was covered with heavy thunderclouds and the
heat was most oppressive, Madame de Maurillac called her daughter whose
room was next to hers. After calling her loudly for some time in vain,
she sprang out of bed in terror and almost broke open the door with her
trembling hands. The room was empty, and the pillows untouched.

Then, nearly mad and foreseeing some irreparable misfortune, the poor
woman ran all over the large house, and then rushed out into the garden,
where the air was heavy with the scent of flowers. She had the
appearance of some wild animal that is being pursued by a pack of
hounds, tried to penetrate the darkness with her anxious looks, and
gasped as if some one were holding her by the throat; but suddenly she
staggered, uttered a painful cry and fell down in a fit.

There before her, in the shadow of the myrtle trees, Fabienne was
sitting on the knees of a man--of the gardener--with both her arms round
his neck and kissing him ardently, and as if to defy her, and to show
her how vain all her precautions and her vigilance had been, the girl
was telling her lover in the country dialect, and in a cooing and
delightful voice, how she adored him and that she belonged to him....

Madame de Maurillac is in a lunatic asylum, and Fabienne has married the
gardener.

What could she have done better?

GHOSTS

Just at the time when the _Concordat_ was in its most flourishing
condition, a young man belonging to a wealthy and highly respected
middle class family went to the office of the head of the police at
P----, and begged for his help and advice, which was immediately
promised him.

"My father threatens to disinherit me," the young man then began,
"although I have never offended against the laws of the State, of
morality or of his paternal authority, merely because I do not share his
blind reverence for the Catholic Church and her Ministers. On that
account he looks upon me, not merely as Latitudinarian, but as a perfect
Atheist, and a faithful old manservant of ours, who is much attached to
me, and who accidentally saw my father's will, told me in confidence
that he had left all his property to the Jesuits. I think this is highly
suspicious, and I fear that the priests have been maligning me to my
father. Until less than a year ago, we used to live very quietly and
happily together, but ever since he has had so much to do with the
clergy,