ad, I no longer knew what I was doing, I had my
compass in my pocket; I struck him with it as often as I could.

"Then she began to cry: 'Help! murder!' and to pull my beard. It seems
that I killed her also. How do I know what I did then?

"Then, when I saw them both lying on the ground, without thinking, I
threw them into the Seine.

"That's all. Now sentence me."

The prisoner sat down. After this revelation the case was carried over to
the following session. It comes up very soon. If we were jurymen, what
would we do with this parricide?

BERTHA

Dr. Bonnet, my old friend--one sometimes has friends older than
one's self--had often invited me to spend some time with him at
Riom, and, as I did not know Auvergne, I made up my mind to visit him in
the summer of 1876.

I arrived by the morning train, and the first person I saw on the
platform was the doctor. He was dressed in a gray suit, and wore a soft,
black, wide-brimmed, high-crowned felt hat, narrow at the top like a
chimney pot, a hat which hardly any one except an Auvergnat would wear,
and which reminded one of a charcoal burner. Dressed like that, the
doctor had the appearance of an old young man, with his spare body under
his thin coat, and his large head covered with white hair.

He embraced me with that evident pleasure which country people feel when
they meet long-expected friends, and, stretching out his arm, he said
proudly:

"This is Auvergne!" I saw nothing before me except a range of mountains,
whose summits, which resembled truncated cones, must have been extinct
volcanoes.

Then, pointing to the name of the station, he said:

"Riom, the fatherland of magistrates, the pride of the magistracy, and
which ought rather to be the fatherland of doctors."

"Why?" I, asked.

"Why?" he replied with a laugh. "If you transpose the letters, you have
the Latin word 'mori', to die. That is the reason why I settled here, my
young friend."

And, delighted at his own joke, he carried me off, rubbing his hands.

As soon as I had swallowed a cup of coffee, he made me go and see the
town. I admired the druggist's house, and the other noted houses, which
were all black, but as pretty as bric-a-brac, with their facades of
sculptured stone. I admired the statue of the Virgin, the patroness of
butchers, and he told me an amusing story about this, which I will relate
some other time, and then Dr. Bonnet said to me:

"I must beg you to excuse me for a