of the Faculty. God forbid that I should be stoned by all the
physicians, and perhaps expelled from France!"

THE MARQUISE DE BRINVILLIERS

When the prayer was done and the doctor raised his head, he saw before
him the executioner wiping his face. "Well, sir," said he, "was not
that a good stroke? I always put up a prayer on these occasions, and
God has always assisted me; but I have been anxious for several days
about this lady. I had six masses said, and I felt strengthened in hand
and heart." He then pulled out a bottle from under his cloak, and drank
a dram; and taking the body under one arm, all dressed as it was, and
the head in his other hand, the eyes still bandaged, he threw both upon
the faggots, which his assistant lighted.

"The next day," says Madame de Sevigne, "people were looking for the
charred bones of Madame de Brinvilliers, because they said she was a
saint."

THE MARQUISE DE GANGES

The beginnings of this union were perfectly happy; the marquis was in
love for the first time, and the marquise did not remember ever to have
been in love. A son and a daughter came to complete their happiness.
The marquise had entirely forgotten the fatal prediction, or, if she
occasionally thought of it now, it was to wonder that she could ever
have believed in it. Such happiness is not of this world, and when by
chance it lingers here a while, it seems sent rather by the anger than
by the goodness of God. Better, indeed, would it be for him who
possesses and who loses it, never to have known it.

VANINKA

About the end of the reign of the Emperor Paul I--that is to say,
towards the middle of the first year of the nineteenth century--just as
four o'clock in the afternoon was sounding from the church of St. Peter
and St. Paul, whose gilded vane overlooks the ramparts of the fortress,
a crowd, composed of all sorts and conditions of people, began to gather
in front of a house which belonged to General Count Tchermayloff,
formerly military governor of a fair-sized town in the government of
Pultava. The first spectators had been attracted by the preparations
which they saw had been made in the middle of the courtyard for
administering torture with the knout. One of the general's serfs, he
who acted as barber, was to be the victim.

Although this kind of punishment was a common enough sight in St.
Petersburg, it nevertheless attracted all passers-by when it was
publicly administered.