lthough I am merely his nephew, I have at
times enough of his hot disposition to feel as he felt after similar
strokes of fate. Having been drawn into his irregular orbit, passing
through the same phases as he passed through, I must expect that nothing
will ever happen to me in the same way as it would happen to others,
himself excepted. Thus the similarity of our adventures--the drum-major
in my case taking the place of my uncle's Jean Bonaffe,--ought not to
have surprised me; it should have been foreseen like a philosophical
contingency previously inscribed in the book of destiny. And, indeed, to
tell the truth, I should have considered the slightest departure from
the precise law of fate illogical.

However, I was either in a bad disposition of mind or I had been too
suddenly and speedily awakened from the presumptuous quietude into which
I had sunk, for I will admit to you that on thinking over my case, I
experienced at the moment a singular feeling of astonishment.

Horns are like teeth, a witty woman once said: they hurt while they are
coming, but afterwards one manages to put up with them!

True as this remark of an experienced person may be, yet having my own
ideas as to these vain appendages which I could not prevent from
sprouting; and being, moreover, sufficiently provided with proofs which
I had duly weighed, my first idea was to dart head first athwart this
intrigue in which my dishonour was a certainty. Leaving Mohammed upon
the divan where he had stranded, I hastened by way of the stairs to the
guilty creature's room.

I softly opened the closed door, stepped gently over the carpet, and
approached her from behind in time to catch her just as she had one hand
on her heart and the other on her lips.

She gave a little shriek, while the drum-major, on seeing me appear so
suddenly, made a gesture of despair. Then he drew back with such haste
that his plume caught against the wall above the window, with the result
that his bearskin was knocked off, and turning a sommersault fell into
the courtyard.

Zouhra thereupon gave another shriek.

All this had occurred with the rapidity of a flash of lightning. My
rival, closing his window, had disappeared like a jack-in-the-box.

We were alone.

"Ah! ha!" I then said to the unworthy creature, "so this is your
conduct----"

She answered nothing; she still hoped, no doubt, that she would be able
to deny the facts, with the brazen assurance of the woman who, a