y, as though the alcohol
had set his blood on fire. He took a step, knocked against a chair,
seized it, went on, reached the bed, ran his hands over it and felt the
warm body of his wife.

Then, maddened, he roared:

"So! You were there, you piece of dirt, and you wouldn't answer!"

And, lifting the chair, which he was holding in his strong sailor's grip,
he swung it down before him with an exasperated fury. A cry burst from
the bed, an agonizing, piercing cry. Then he began to thrash around like
a thresher in a barn. And soon nothing more moved. The chair was broken
to pieces, but he still held one leg and beat away with it, panting.

At last he stopped to ask:

"Well, are you ready to tell me who it was?"

Melina did not answer.

Then tired out, stupefied from his exertion, he stretched himself out on
the ground and slept.

When day came a neighbor, seeing the door open, entered. He saw Jeremie
snoring on the floor, amid the broken pieces of a chair, and on the bed a
pulp of flesh and blood.

THE WARDROBE

As we sat chatting after dinner, a party of men, the conversation turned
on women, for lack of something else.

One of us said:

"Here's a funny thing that happened to me on, that very subject." And he
told us the following story:

One evening last winter I suddenly felt overcome by that overpowering
sense of misery and languor that takes possession of one from time to
time. I was in my own apartment, all alone, and I was convinced that if I
gave in to my feelings I should have a terrible attack of melancholia,
one of those attacks that lead to suicide when they recur too often.

I put on my overcoat and went out without the slightest idea of what I
was going to do. Having gone as far as the boulevards, I began to wander
along by the almost empty cafes. It was raining, a fine rain that affects
your mind as it does your clothing, not one of those good downpours which
come down in torrents, driving breathless passers-by into doorways, but a
rain without drops that deposits on your clothing an imperceptible spray
and soon covers you with a sort of iced foam that chills you through.

What should I do? I walked in one direction and then came back, looking
for some place where I could spend two hours, and discovering for the
first time that there is no place of amusement in Paris in the evening.
At last I decided to go to the Folies-Bergere, that entertaining resort
for gay women.

There were ve