y: I don't even know how I am going to
pay for your complexion cream!'

"'Ah!' she sighed.

"She added, however, 'And ... the child?'

"'What child?'

"'Our child ... our child.'

"'Ah! That is so. Why, you will have to put it down to profit and
loss. I am even convinced that Sheik Ahmed will find that it resembles
him.'

"'You can turn everything into a joke,' she said between laughing and
crying.

"The next morning, at the same hour, the Marseilles express carried
away the five Tuareg and Clementine. The young woman, radiant, was
leaning on the arm of Sheik Ahmed, who was beside himself with joy.

"'Have you many shops in your capital?' she asked him languidly.

"And he, smiling broadly under his veil, replied:

"'_Besef, besef, bono, roumis, bono_.'

"At the last moment, Clementine had a pang of emotion.

"'Listen, Casimir, you have always been kind to me. I am going to be a
queen. If you weary of it here, promise me, swear to me....'

"The Sheik had understood. He took a ring from his finger and slipped
it onto mine.

"'Sidi Casimir, comrade,' he affirmed. 'You come--find us. Take Sidi
Ahmed's ring and show it. Everybody at Ahaggar comrades. _Bono_
Ahaggar, _bono_.'

"When I came out of the _Gare de Lyon_, I had the feeling of having
perpetrated an excellent joke."

The Hetman of Jitomir was completely drunk. I had had the utmost
difficulty in understanding the end of his story, because he
interjected, every other moment, couplets from Jacques Offenbach's
best score.

_Dans un bois passait un jeune homme,
Un jeune homme frais et beau,
Sa main tenait une pomme,
Vous voyez d'ici le tableau_.

"Who was disagreeably surprised by the fall of Sedan? It was Casimir,
poor old Casimir! Five thousand _louis_ to pay by the fifth of
September, and not the first sou, no, not the first sou. I take my hat
and my courage and go to the Tuileries. No more Emperor there, no! But
the Empress was so kind. I found her alone--ah, people scatter quickly
under such circumstances!--alone, with a senator, M. Merimee, the only
literary man I have ever known who was at the same time a man of the
world. 'Madame,' he was saying to her, 'you must give up all hope. M.
Thiers, whom I just met on the _Pont Royal_, would listen to nothing.'

"'Madame,' I said in my turn, 'Your Majesty always will know where her
true friends are.'

"And I kissed her hand.

"_Evohe, que les deesses
Out de