with fierce,
murderous eyes, gnashing his teeth. Yes, murderous eyes in truth, for
at that moment M. Joyeuse is dreaming a terrible dream. One of his
daughters is sitting there, opposite him, beside that annoying brute,
and the villain is putting his arm around her waist under her cloak.

"Take your hand away, monsieur," M. Joyeuse has already said twice. The
other simply laughs contemptuously. Now he attempts to embrace Elise.

"Ah! villain!"

Lacking strength to defend his daughter, M. Joyeuse, foaming with rage,
feels in his pocket for his knife, stabs the insolent knave in the
breast, and goes away with head erect, strong in the consciousness of
his rights as an outraged father, to make his statement at the nearest
police-station.

"I have just killed a man in an omnibus!"

The poor fellow wakes at the sound of his own voice actually uttering
those sinister words, but not at the police-station; he realizes
from the horrified faces of the passengers that he must have spoken
aloud, and speedily avails himself of the conductor's call:
"Saint-Philippe--Pantheon--Bastille," to alight, in dire confusion and
amid general stupefaction.

That imagination, always on the alert, gave to M. Joyeuse's face a
strangely feverish, haggard expression, in striking contrast to the
faultlessly correct dress and bearing of the petty clerk. He lived
through so many passionate existences in a single day. Such waking
dreamers as he, in whom a too restricted destiny holds in check
unemployed forces, heroic faculties, are more numerous than is
generally supposed. Dreaming is the safety valve through which it all
escapes, with a terrible spluttering, an intensely hot vapor and
floating images which instantly disappear. Some come forth from these
visions radiant, others downcast and abashed, finding themselves once
more on the commonplace level of everyday life. M. Joyeuse was of the
former class, constantly soaring aloft to heights from which one cannot
descend without being a little shaken by the rapidity of the journey.

Now, one morning when our _Imaginaire_ had left his house at the usual
hour and under the usual circumstances, he started upon one of his
little private romances as he turned out of Rue Saint-Ferdinand. The
end of the year was close at hand, and, perhaps it was the sight of a
board shanty under construction in the neighboring woodyard that made
him think of "New Year's gifts." And thereupon the word _bonus_
planted