r body trembles!"

Monsieur Auballe had risen, and, after walking up and down the room once
or twice, he looked at me, and said, with a smile:--

"That is love in the desert!"

"Suppose she were to come back?" I asked him.

"Horrid girl!" he replied.

"But I should be very glad if she did return to me."

"And you would pardon the shepherd?"

"Good heavens, yes! With women, one must always pardon ... or else
pretend not to see things."

A FAMILY AFFAIR

The Neuilly steam-tram had just passed the _Porte Maillot_, and was going
along the broad avenue that terminates at the Seine. The small engine
that was attached to the car whistled to warn any obstacle to get out of
its way, sent out its steam, and panted like a person out of breath from
running does, and its pistons made a rapid noise, like iron legs that
were running. The oppressive heat of the end of a July day lay over the
whole city, and from the road, although there was not a breath of wind
stirring, there arose a white, chalky, opaque, suffocating, and warm
dust, which stuck to the moist skin, filled the eyes, and got into the
lungs, and people were standing in the doors of their houses in search
of a little air.

The windows of the steam-tram were down, and the curtains fluttered in
the wind, and there were very few passengers inside, because on such warm
days people preferred the top or the platforms. Those few consisted of
stout women in strange toilets, of those shopkeepers' wives from the
suburbs, who made up for the distinguished looks which they did not
possess, by ill-timed dignity; of gentlemen who were tired of the office,
with yellow-faces, who stooped rather, and with one shoulder higher than
the other, in consequence of their long hours of work bending over the
desk. Their uneasy and melancholy faces also spoke of domestic troubles,
of constant want of money, of former hopes, that had been finally
disappointed; for they all belonged to that army of poor, threadbare
devils who vegetate economically in mean, plastered houses, with a tiny
piece of neglected garden in the midst of those fields where night soil
is deposited, which are on the outskirts of Paris.

A short, fat man, with a puffy face and a big stomach, dressed all in
black, and wearing a decoration in his button-hole, was talking to a
tall, thin man, dressed in a dirty, white linen suit, that was all
unbuttoned, with a white Panama hat on. The former spoke so slowly and