howed herself, gesticulating and uttering shrill cries into
the iron saucepan which covered her face, while she menaced the old
peasant woman, who was nearly dead, with her broom.

Terrified, with an insane expression on her face, the dying woman made a
superhuman effort to get up and escape; she even got her shoulders and
chest out of bed; then she fell back with a deep sigh. All was over, and
La Rapet calmly put everything back into its place; the broom into the
corner by the cupboard the sheet inside it, the saucepan on the hearth,
the pail on the floor, and the chair against the wall. Then, with
professional movements, she closed the dead woman's large eyes, put a
plate on the bed and poured some holy water into it, placing in it the
twig of boxwood that had been nailed to the chest of drawers, and
kneeling down, she fervently repeated the prayers for the dead, which she
knew by heart, as a matter of business.

And when Honore returned in the evening he found her praying, and he
calculated immediately that she had made twenty sows out of him, for she
had only spent three days and one night there, which made five francs
altogether, instead of the six which he owed her.

THE SNIPE

Old Baron des Ravots had for forty years been the champion sportsman of
his province. But a stroke of paralysis had kept him in his chair for the
last five or six years. He could now only shoot pigeons from the window
of his drawing-room or from the top of his high doorsteps.

He spent his time in reading.

He was a good-natured business man, who had much of the literary spirit
of a former century. He worshipped anecdotes, those little risque
anecdotes, and also true stories of events that happened in his
neighborhood. As soon as a friend came to see him he asked:

"Well, anything new?"

And he knew how to worm out information like an examining lawyer.

On sunny days he had his large reclining chair, similar to a bed, wheeled
to the hall door. A man servant behind him held his guns, loaded them and
handed them to his master. Another valet, hidden in the bushes, let fly a
pigeon from time to time at irregular intervals, so that the baron should
be unprepared and be always on the watch.

And from morning till night he fired at the birds, much annoyed if he
were taken by surprise and laughing till he cried when the animal fell
straight to the earth or, turned over in some comical and unexpected
manner. He would turn to the man