alls on which the planks were laid,--a frail construction,
shaken by the brick-layers, but held together by ropes, white with
plaster, and insecurely protected from the wheels of carriages by the
breastwork of planks which the law requires round all such buildings.
There is something maritime in these masts, and ladders, and cordage,
even in the shouts of the masons. About a dozen yards from the hotel
Maulincour, one of these ephemeral barriers was erected before a house
which was then being built of blocks of free-stone. The day after the
event we have just related, at the moment when the Baron de Maulincour
was passing this scaffolding in his cabriolet on his way to see Madame
Jules, a stone, two feet square, which was being raised to the upper
storey of this building, got loose from the ropes and fell, crushing the
baron's servant who was behind the cabriolet. A cry of horror shook both
the scaffold and the masons; one of them, apparently unable to keep his
grasp on a pole, was in danger of death, and seemed to have been touched
by the stone as it passed him.

A crowd collected rapidly; the masons came down the ladders swearing
and insisting that Monsieur de Maulincour's cabriolet had been driven
against the boarding and so had shaken their crane. Two inches more and
the stone would have fallen on the baron's head. The groom was dead,
the carriage shattered. 'Twas an event for the whole neighborhood, the
newspapers told of it. Monsieur de Maulincour, certain that he had not
touched the boarding, complained; the case went to court. Inquiry being
made, it was shown that a small boy, armed with a lath, had mounted
guard and called to all foot-passengers to keep away. The affair ended
there. Monsieur de Maulincour obtained no redress. He had lost his
servant, and was confined to his bed for some days, for the back of the
carriage when shattered had bruised him severely, and the nervous shock
of the sudden surprise gave him a fever. He did not, therefore, go to
see Madame Jules.

Ten days after this event, he left the house for the first time, in his
repaired cabriolet, when, as he drove down the rue de Bourgogne and was
close to the sewer opposite to the Chamber of Deputies, the axle-tree
broke in two, and the baron was driving so rapidly that the breakage
would have caused the two wheels to come together with force enough to
break his head, had it not been for the resistance of the leather hood.
Nevertheless, he was ba