vehicle would
have sent everybody in it flying far away. At this, furious with one of
those plebeian rages which in women of her kind shatter all the veneer
of their luxury, she dealt the Nabob two stinging lashes with her whip,
which left little trace on his tanned and hardened face, but which
brought there a ferocious expression, accentuated by the short nose
which had turned white and was slit at the end like that of a sporting
terrier.

"Come down, or, by God, I will upset the whole thing!"

Amid an eddy of carriages arrested by the block in the traffic, or that
passed slowly round the obstacle, with thousands of curious eyes, amid
cries of coachmen and clinking of bits, two wrists of iron shook the
entire vehicle.

"Jump--but jump, I tell you! Don't you see he will have us over? What a
grip!"

And the woman looked at the Hercules with interest.

Hardly had Moessard set foot to the ground, and before he could take
refuge on the pavement, whither the black military caps of policemen
could be seen hastening, Jansoulet threw himself upon him, lifted him by
the back of the neck like a rabbit, and, careless of his protestations
and his terrified stammerings:

"Yes, yes, I will give you satisfaction, you blackguard! But, first, I
intend to do to you what is done to dirty beasts to prevent them from
repeating the same offence."

And roughly he set to work rubbing his nose and face all over with his
newspaper, which he had rolled into a ball, stifling him, blinding him
with it, and making scratches from which the blood trickled over his
skin. The man was dragged from his hands, crimson, suffocated. A little
more and he would have killed him.

The struggle over, pulling down his sleeves, adjusting his crumpled
linen, picking up his portfolio out of which the papers of the Sarigue
election were flying scattered even to the gutter, the Nabob answered
the policemen who were asking him for his name in order to draw up a
summons:

"Bernard Jansoulet, Deputy for Corsica."

A public man!

Only then did he remember that he was one. Who would have suspected
it, seeing him breathless and bare-headed, like a porter after a street
fight, under the eager, coldly mocking glances of the crowd?

THE APPARITION

If you want simple and sincere feeling, if you would see overflowing
affection, tenderness, laughter--the laughter born of great happiness
which, at a tiny movement of the lips, is brought to the verge of
tea