against something. I rose up. We had come close to a tiny islet.

But I remained enchanted, in an ecstasy. Before us stretched the
firmament, red, pink, violet, spotted with fiery clouds resembling golden
vapor. The river was glowing with purple and three houses on one side of
it seemed to be burning.

I bent toward my companion. I was going to say, "Oh! look!" But I held my
tongue, quite dazed, and I could no longer see anything except her. She,
too, was rosy, with rosy flesh tints with a deeper tinge that was partly
a reflection of the hue of the sky. Her tresses were rosy; her eyes were
rosy; her teeth were rosy; her dress, her laces, her smile, all were
rosy. And in truth I believed, so overpowering was the illusion, that the
dawn was there in the flesh before me.

She rose softly to her feet, holding out her lips to me; and I moved
toward her, trembling, delirious feeling indeed that I was going to kiss
Heaven, to kiss happiness, to kiss a dream that had become a woman, to
kiss the ideal which had descended into human flesh.

She said to me: "You have a caterpillar in your hair." And, suddenly, I
felt as sad as if I had lost all hope in life.

That is all, madame. It is puerile, silly, stupid. But I am sure that
since that day it would be impossible for me to love. And yet--who
can tell?

[The young man upon whom this letter was found was yesterday taken out of
the Seine between Bougival and Marly. An obliging bargeman, who had
searched the pockets in order to ascertain the name of the deceased,
brought this paper to the author.]

THE ORPHAN

Mademoiselle Source had adopted this boy under very sad circumstances.
She was at the time thirty-six years old. Being disfigured through having
as a child slipped off her nurse's lap into the fireplace and burned her
face shockingly, she had determined not to marry, for she did not want
any man to marry her for her money.

A neighbor of hers, left a widow just before her child was born, died in
giving birth, without leaving a sou. Mademoiselle Source took the
new-born child, put him out to nurse, reared him, sent him to a
boarding-school, then brought him home in his fourteenth year, in order
to have in her empty house somebody who would love her, who would look
after her, and make her old age pleasant.

She had a little country place four leagues from Rennes, and she now
dispensed with a servant; her expenses having increased to more than
double since this