pse.

The afflicted relations discovered exactly on the spot where the brand
had fallen a certain object artistically enveloped in a mass of plaster.

"Proceed," said the eldest of the heirs.

The chisel of the apprentice then brought to light a human head and some
odds and ends of clothing, from which they recognized the count whom all
the town believed to have died at Java, and whose loss had been bitterly
deplored by his wife.

The narrator of this old story was a tall spare man, with light eyes and
brown hair, and the author thought he saw in him a vague resemblance to
the demon who had before this tormented him; but the stranger did not
show the cloven foot. Suddenly the word ADULTERY sounded in the ears of
the author; and this word woke up in his imagination the most mournful
countenances of that procession which before this had streamed by on the
utterance of the magic syllables. From that evening he was haunted and
persecuted by dreams of a work which did not yet exist; and at no period
of his life was the author assailed with such delusive notions about the
fatal subject of this book. But he bravely resisted the fiend, although
the latter referred the most unimportant incidents of life to this
unknown work, and like a customhouse officer set his stamp of mockery
upon every occurrence.

Some days afterwards the author found himself in the company of two
ladies. The first of them had been one of the most refined and the most
intellectual women of Napoleon's court. In his day she occupied a
lofty position, but the sudden appearance of the Restoration caused her
downfall; she became a recluse. The second, who was young and beautiful,
was at that time living at Paris the life of a fashionable woman. They
were friends, because, the one being forty and the other twenty-two
years old, they were seldom rivals on the same field. The author was
considered quite insignificant by the first of the two ladies, and since
the other soon discovered this, they carried on in his presence the
conversation which they had begun in a frank discussion of a woman's
lot.

"Have you noticed, dear, that women in general bestow their love only
upon a fool?"

"What do you mean by that, duchess? And how can you make your remark fit
in with the fact that they have an aversion for their husbands?"

"These women are absolute tyrants!" said the author to himself. "Has the
devil again turned up in a mob cap?"

"No, dear, I am not joki