end.

M. de Meroul had a paper in each hand. "Le Gaulois" for himself and
"Le Clarion" for his wife.

The ardent prose of the master-writer who overthrew the empire,
violently declaimed, recited in the accent of the South, rang through
the peaceful drawing-room, shook the old curtains with their rigid
folds, seemed to splash the walls, the large upholstered chairs, the
solemn furniture fixed in the same position for the past century, with
a hail of words, rebounding, impudent, ironical and crushing.

The husband and the wife, the one standing, the other seated, listened
in a state of stupor, so scandalized that they no longer even ventured
to make a gesture. Mouradour launched out the concluding passage in
the article as one lets forth a jet of fireworks, then in an emphatic
tone remarked:

"That's a stinger, eh?"

But suddenly he perceived the two prints belonging to his friend, and
he seemed himself for a moment overcome with astonishment. Then, he
came across to his host with great strides, demanding in angry tone:

"What do you want to do with these papers?" M. de Meroul replied in a
hesitating voice:

"Why, these--these are my--my newspapers."

"Your newspapers! Look here, now, you are only laughing at me! You
will do me the favor to read mine, to stir you up with a few new
ideas, and, as for yours--this is what I do with them--"

And before his host, filled with confusion, could prevent him, he
seized the two newspapers and flung them out through the window. Then
he gravely placed "La Justice" in the hands of Madame de Meroul and
"Le Voltaire" in those of her husband, and he sank into an armchair to
finish "L'Intransigeant."

The husband and the wife, through feelings of delicacy, made a show of
reading a little, then they handed back the Republican newspapers,
which they touched with their finger-tips as if they had been
poisoned.

Then he burst out laughing, and said:

"A week of this sort of nourishment, and I'll have you converted to my
ideas."

At the end of the week, in fact, he ruled the house. He had shut the
door on the cure, whom Madame Meroul went to see in secret. He gave
orders that neither the "Gaulois" nor the "Clarion" were to be
admitted into the house, which a man-servant went to get in a
mysterious fashion at the post-office, and which, on his entrance,
were hidden away under the sofa cushions. He regulated everything
just as he liked, always charming, always good-natured, a jo