uriously without succeeding in
breaking it, then, all of a sudden, like a swimmer taking a plunge, he
dashed into the air with his two hands in front of him.

Mederic rushed forward to give succor. As he crossed the park, he saw
the woodcutters going to work. He called out to them telling them an
accident had occurred, and at the foot of the walls they found a
bleeding body the head of which was crushed on a rock. The Brindelle
surrounded this rock, and over its clear, calm waters, swollen at this
point, could be seen a long red stream of mingled brains and blood.

* * * * *

MOTHER AND DAUGHTER

"The Comtesse Samoris."

"That lady in black over there?"

"The very one. She's wearing mourning for her daughter, whom she
killed."

"Come now! You don't mean that seriously?"

"Oh! it is a very simple story, without any crime in it, any violence."

"Then what really happened?"

"Almost nothing. Many courtesans were born to be virtuous women, they
say; and many women called virtuous were born to be courtesans--is that
not so? Now, Madame Samoris, who was born a courtesan, had a daughter
born a virtuous woman, that's all."

"I don't quite understand you."

"I'll explain what I mean. The Comtesse Samoris is one of those tinsel
foreign women hundreds of whom are rained down every year on Paris. A
Hungarian or Wallachian countess, or I know not what, she appeared one
winter in apartments she had taken in the Champs Elysees, that quarter
for adventurers and adventuresses, and opened her drawing-room to the
first comer or to anyone that turned up.

"I went there. Why? you will say. I really can't tell you. I went there,
as everyone goes to such places because the women are facile and the men
are dishonest. You know that set composed of filibusters with varied
decorations, all noble, all titled, all unknown at the embassies, with
the exception of those who are spies. All talk of their honor without
the slightest occasion for doing so, boast of their ancestors, tell you
about their lives, braggarts, liars, sharpers, as dangerous as the false
cards they have up their sleeves, as delusive as their name--in short,
the aristocracy of the bagnio.

"I adore these people. They are interesting to study, interesting to
know, amusing to understand, often clever, never commonplace like public
functionaries. Their wives are always pretty, with a slight flavor of
foreign roguery, with the myst