falls in love
with a real girl! He beats her, she scratches him, they execrate each
other, cannot bear the sight of each other and yet cannot part, linked
together by no one knows what mysterious psychic bonds. She deceives him,
he knows it, sobs and forgives her. He despises and adores her without
seeing that she would be justified in despising him. They are both
atrociously unhappy and yet cannot separate. They cast invectives,
reproaches and abominable accusations at each other from morning till
night, and when they have reached the climax and are vibrating with rage
and hatred, they fall into each other's arms and kiss each other
ardently.

The girl-man is brave and a coward at the same time. He has, more than
another, the exalted sentiment of honor, but is lacking in the sense of
simple honesty, and, circumstances favoring him, would defalcate and
commit infamies which do not trouble his conscience, for he obeys without
questioning the oscillations of his ideas, which are always impulsive.

To him it seems permissible and almost right to cheat a haberdasher. He
considers it honorable not to pay his debts, unless they are gambling
debts--that is, somewhat shady. He dupes people whenever the laws of
society admit of his doing so. When he is short of money he borrows in
all ways, not always being scrupulous as to tricking the lenders, but he
would, with sincere indignation, run his sword through anyone who should
suspect him of only lacking in politeness.

OLD AMABLE

PART I

The humid gray sky seemed to weigh down on the vast brown plain. The odor
of autumn, the sad odor of bare, moist lands, of fallen leaves, of dead
grass made the stagnant evening air more thick and heavy. The peasants
were still at work, scattered through the fields, waiting for the stroke
of the Angelus to call them back to the farmhouses, whose thatched roofs
were visible here and there through the branches of the leafless trees
which protected the apple-gardens against the wind.

At the side of the road, on a heap of clothes, a very small boy seated
with his legs apart was playing with a potato, which he now and then let
fall on his dress, whilst five women were bending down planting slips of
colza in the adjoining plain. With a slow, continuous movement, all along
the mounds of earth which the plough had just turned up, they drove in
sharp wooden stakes and in the hole thus formed placed the plant, already
a litt