arm was perfectly motionless. Everybody made way in silence for
this couple, whom we all watched with some excitement. Imagine a picture
by Murillo come to life. Under black and hollow brows the man's eyes
were like a fixed blaze; his face looked dried up, his bald skull was
red, and his frame was a terror to behold, he was so emaciated. His
wife--no, you cannot imagine her. Her figure had the supple swing for
which the Spaniards created the word _meneho_; though pale, she was
still beautiful; her complexion was dazzlingly fair--a rare thing in
a Spaniard; and her gaze, full of the Spanish sun, fell on you like a
stream of melted lead.

"'Madame,' said I to her, towards the end of the evening, 'what
occurrence led to the loss of your arm?'

"'I lost it in the war of independence,' said she."

"Spain is a strange country," said Madame de la Baudraye. "It still
shows traces of Arab manners."

"Oh!" said the journalist, laughing, "the mania for cutting off arms
is an old one there. It turns up every now and then like some of our
newspaper hoaxes, for the subject has given plots for plays on the
Spanish stage so early as 1570--"

"Then do you think me capable of inventing such a story?" said Monsieur
Gravier, nettled by Lousteau's impertinent tone.

"Quite incapable of such a thing," said the journalist with grave irony.

"Pooh!" said Bianchon, "the inventions of romances and play-writers are
quite as often transferred from their books and pieces into real life,
as the events of real life are made use of on the stage or adapted to a
tale. I have seen the comedy of _Tartufe_ played out--with the exception
of the close; Orgon's eyes could not be opened to the truth."

"And the tragi-comedy of _Adolphe_ by Benjamin Constant is constantly
enacted," cried Lousteau.

"And do you suppose," asked Madame de la Baudraye, "that such adventures
as Monsieur Gravier has related could ever occur now, and in France?"

"Dear me!" cried Clagny, "of the ten or twelve startling crimes that are
annually committed in France, quite half are mixed up with circumstances
at least as extraordinary as these, and often outdoing them in romantic
details. Indeed, is not this proved by the reports in the _Gazette des
Tribunaux_--the Police news--in my opinion, one of the worst abuses of
the Press? This newspaper, which was started only in 1826 or '27, was
not in existence when I began my professional career, and the facts of
the crime I am abou