ind, and she
did not recognize in him the poor little lad on whom she had taken pity
in the days gone by, nor did he remind her of the circumstance. He
allowed her to believe that she was adored by a rich young man, who was
passionately devoted to her. He was young, ardent, and caressing. Never
had a mistress such a lover, and for three weeks, before she relapsed
into the horrors of madness, which were happily soon terminated by her
death, she intoxicated herself with the ecstasy of his kisses, and thus
bade farewell to conscient life in an apotheosis of love.

The other day, at dessert, after an artists' dinner, they were speaking
of Francois Guerland, whose last picture at the _Salon_ had been so
deservedly praised. "Ah! yes," one of them said, with a contemptuous
voice and look. "That handsome fellow Guerland!" And another,
accentuating the insinuation, added boldly: "Yes, that is exactly it!
That handsome, too handsome fellow Guerland, the man who allows himself
to be kept by women."

AN ARTIST

"Bah! Monsieur," the old mountebank said to me; "it is a matter of
exercise and habit, that is all! Of course, one requires to be a little
gifted that way, and not to be butter-fingered, but what is chiefly
necessary is patience and daily practice for long, long years."

His modesty surprised me all the more, because of all those performers
who are generally infatuated with their own skill, he was the most
wonderfully clever one that I had ever met. Certainly, I had frequently
seen him, and everybody had seen him in some circus or other, or even in
traveling shows, performing the trick that consists of putting a man or
a woman with extended arms against a wooden target, and in throwing
knives between their fingers and round their head, from a distance.
There is nothing very extraordinary in it, after all, when one knows
_the tricks of the trade_, and that the knives are not the least sharp,
and stick into the wood at some distance from the flesh. It is the
rapidity of the throws, the glitter of the blades, the curve which the
handles make towards their living aim, which give an air of danger to an
exhibition that has become common-place, and only requires very middling
skill.

But here there was no trick and no deception, and no dust thrown into
the eyes. It was done in good earnest and in all sincerity. The knives
were as sharp as razors, and the old mountebank planted them close to
the flesh, exactly in the a