up like horns, took a broom in her right hand and a tin pail in her
left, which she threw up suddenly, so that it might fall to the ground
noisily.

Certainly when it came down, it made a terrible noise. Then, climbing
on to a chair, the nurse showed herself, gesticulating and uttering
shrill cries into the pot which covered her face, while she menaced the
old peasant woman, who was nearly dead, with her broom.

Terrified, with a mad look 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 pot on to the
hearth, the pail on to the floor, and the chair against the wall. Then
with a professional air, she closed the dead woman's enormous eyes, put
a plate on the bed and poured some holy water into it, dipped the twig
of boxwood into it, and kneeling down, she fervently repeated the
prayers for the dead, which she knew by heart, as a matter of business.

When Honore returned in the evening, he found her praying. He
calculated immediately that she had made twenty sous 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.

EPIPHANY

"Ah!" said Captain the Count de Garens, "I should rather think that I
do remember that Epiphany supper, during the war!

"At the time I was quarter-master of cavalry, and for a fort night, I
had been lurking about as a scout in front of the German advanced
guard. The evening before we had cut down a few Uhlans and had lost
three men, one of whom was that poor little Raudeville. You remember
Joseph de Raudeville well, of course.

"Well, on that day my captain ordered me to take six troopers and
occupy the village of Porterin, where there had been five fights in
three weeks, and to hold it all night. There were not twenty houses
left standing, nay, not a dozen, in that wasp's nest. So I took ten
troopers, and set out at about four o'clock; at five o'clock, while it
was still pitch dark, we reached the first houses of Porterin. I halted
and ordered Marchas--you know Pierre de Marchas, who afterward married
little Martel-Auvelin, the daughter of the Marquis de
Martel-Auvelin--to go alone into the village and to report to me what
he saw.

"I had chosen nothing b