hich I replied: 'No,' with a smile, as I looked at his
wife, who had put her arm into that of her husband, and was trying to
see into the carriage.

"I shook hands with them and told my coachman to start, and during the
whole drive the dead man kept falling against me. When we got to his
house I said that he had become unconscious on the way home, and helped
to carry him upstairs, where I certified that he was dead, and acted
another comedy to his distracted family, and at last I got back to bed,
not without swearing at lovers."

The doctor ceased, though he was still smiling, and the young woman, who
was in a very nervous state, said: "Why have you told me that terrible
story?"

He gave her a gallant bow, and replied:

"So that I may offer you my services if they should be needed."

DREAMS

They had just dined together, five old friends, a writer, a doctor and
three rich bachelors without any profession.

They had talked about everything, and a feeling of lassitude came over
them, that feeling which precedes and leads to the departure of guests
after festive gatherings. One of those present, who had for the last
five minutes been gazing silently at the surging boulevard dotted with
gas-lamps, with its rattling vehicles, said suddenly:

"When you've nothing to do from morning till night, the days are long."

"And the nights too," assented the guest who sat next to him. "I sleep
very little; pleasures fatigue me; conversation is monotonous. Never
do I come across a new idea, and I feel, before talking to any one, a
violent longing to say nothing and to listen to nothing. I don't know
what to do with my evenings."

The third idler remarked:

"I would pay a great deal for anything that would help me to pass just
two pleasant hours every day."

The writer, who had just thrown his overcoat across his arm, turned
round to them, and said:

"The man who could discover a new vice and introduce it among his
fellow creatures, even if it were to shorten their lives, would render a
greater service to humanity than the man who found the means of securing
to them eternal salvation and eternal youth."

The doctor burst out laughing, and, while he chewed his cigar, he said:

"Yes, but it is not so easy to discover it. Men have however crudely,
been seeking for--and working for the object you refer to since the
beginning of the world. The men who came first reached perfection at
once in this way. We are hardly eq