e soup had been served up.

"I sat down at the table as usual. Miss Harriet was there, eating away
solemnly, without speaking to any one, without even lifting her eyes.
Her manner and expression were, however, the same as usual.

"I waited patiently till the meal had been finished, when, turning
toward the landlady, I said: 'Well, Madame Lecacheur, it will not be
long now before I shall have to take my leave of you.'

"The good woman, at once surprised and troubled, replied in her drawling
voice: 'My dear sir, what is it you say? You are going to leave us after
I have become so accustomed to you?'

"I glanced at Miss Harriet out of the corner of my eye. Her countenance
did not change in the least. But Celeste, the little servant, looked up
at me. She was a fat girl, of about eighteen years of age, rosy, fresh,
as strong as a horse, and possessing the rare attribute of cleanliness.
I had kissed her at odd times in out-of-the-way corners, after the
manner of travellers--nothing more.

"The dinner being at length over, I went to smoke my pipe under the
apple trees, walking up and down from one end of the enclosure to the
other. All the reflections which I had made during the day, the strange
discovery of the morning, that passionate and grotesque attachment for
me, the recollections which that revelation had suddenly called up,
recollections at once charming and perplexing, perhaps also that
look which the servant had cast on me at the announcement of my
departure--all these things, mixed up and combined, put me now in a
reckless humor, gave me a tickling sensation of kisses on the lips and
in my veins a something which urged me on to commit some folly.

"Night was coming on, casting its dark shadows under the trees, when
I descried Celeste, who had gone to fasten up the poultry yard at the
other end of the enclosure. I darted toward her, running so noiselessly
that she heard nothing, and as she got up from closing the small
trapdoor by which the chickens got in and out, I clasped her in my arms
and rained on her coarse, fat face a shower of kisses. She
struggled, laughing all the time, as she was accustomed to do in such
circumstances. Why did I suddenly loose my grip of her? Why did I at
once experience a shock? What was it that I heard behind me?

"It was Miss Harriet, who had come upon us, who had seen us and who
stood in front of us motionless as a spectre. Then she disappeared in
the darkness.

"I was ashame