savage fierceness that made my very bones
ache. "This is carrying it with a high hand, to be sure, to flatter
yourself that such wilful carelessness will not be discovered. Do you
suppose," she cried, pointing to the fragments of glass, "that _my_
nerves could feel a crash like that, and I not come down to see what
had happened?"

She spoke so volubly, and kept so firm a grip of my arm, that I could
not get breath to utter a word of self-defence,--indeed, what defence
could I make? Yet I should say, from my mistress's singular manner,
that _she_ had seen that vision too, so wild were her eyes, so haggard
her face.

Little Jacques was buried. His attentive parents enjoyed a
carriage-ride, with his miniature coffin between them, quite as
well as if the little fellow had accompanied them alive and full of
mischief.

Outside matters, as Monsieur said, being now off his mind, he could
attend to business again.

The mirror belonged to "business." I had been writhing under that
knowledge all the morning of their absence.

Monsieur took the sight of his despoiled glass as calmly as Diogenes
might have viewed a similar disaster from his tub. Monsieur's
philosophy was grounded upon common sense. He knew that the frame
was valuable. He knew also that I had saved enough to pay for the
accident. I knew it, too, and was well aware that he would exact
payment to the uttermost farthing. Monsieur, therefore, was quite
cool. He laughed loudly at Madame's excitement, and the feverish
account she gave of my fright, my deceitfulness, and pretending to see
what nobody else saw.

"Little Jacques!" I heard him exclaim, as I entered the room,
shrugging his shoulders with such a contemptuously good-natured
sneer as only a Frenchman can manufacture; and raising both his hands
derisively, he went off with vivacity to his business.

In the morning I left. Monsieur endeavored to persuade me to stay. But
my business there was finished. I was quite as cool as Monsieur,--in
fact, a little chilly. I was determined to go. Madame was determined
also; we could no longer get along together; each hated and feared
the other; and Madame C---- having used overnight what influence she
possessed to bring her husband to see the necessity of my departure,
his objections were not very difficult to remove.

I could not afford to be out of work, that was true, and it might take
me a long time to get it; but I was tired to death, and glad of any
excuse for