e kissed, knowing, after a fashion, how to express what she loved. She
reminded me of the pretty little toys which say 'papa' and 'mamma' when
you pull a string.

"Now she talks--badly--very badly. She makes as many mistakes as
ever--but I can understand her.

"I have opened my doll to look inside--and I have seen. And now I have
to talk to her!

"Ah! you don't know, as I do, the opinions, the ideas, the theories of
a well-educated young English girl, whom I can blame in nothing, and
who repeats to me from morning till night sentences from a French reader
prepared in England for the use of young ladies' schools.

"You have seen those cotillon favors, those pretty gilt papers, which
enclose candies with an abominable taste. I have one of them. I tore it
open. I wished to eat what was inside and it disgusted me so that I feel
nauseated at seeing her compatriots.

"I have married a parrot to whom some old English governess might have
taught French. Do you understand?"

The harbor of Trouville was now showing its wooden piers covered with
people.

I said:

"Where is your wife?"

He answered:

"I took her back to Etretat."

"And you, where are you going?"

"I? Oh, I am going to rest up here at Trouville."

Then, after a pause, he added:

"You have no idea what a fool a woman can be at times!"

THE ACCURSED BREAD

Daddy Taille had three daughters: Anna, the eldest, who was scarcely
ever mentioned in the family; Rose, the second girl, who was eighteen,
and Clara, the youngest, who was a girl of fifteen.

Old Taille was a widower and a foreman in M. Lebrument's button
manufactory. He was a very upright man, very well thought of,
abstemious; in fact, a sort of model workman. He lived at Havre, in the
Rue d'Angouleme.

When Anna ran away from home the old man flew into a fearful rage. He
threatened to kill the head clerk in a large draper's establishment in
that town, whom he suspected. After a time, when he was told by various
people that she was very steady and investing money in government
securities, that she was no gadabout, but was a great friend of Monsieur
Dubois, who was a judge of the Tribunal of Commerce, the father was
appeased.

He even showed some anxiety as to how she was getting on, and asked some
of her old friends who had been to see her, and when told that she had
her own furniture, and that her mantelpiece was covered with vases and
the walls with pictures, that there were cloc