ing. I could not do
otherwise than die--nothing could have washed me clean--I was too
polluted. I could no longer love or be loved. It seemed to me that I
stained everyone by merely allowing my hand to be touched.

"Presently I am going to take my bath, and I will never come back.

"This letter for you will go to my lover. It will reach him when I am
dead, and without anyone knowing anything about it, he will forward it to
you, accomplishing my last wishes. And you shall read it on your return
from the cemetery.

"Adieu, father! I have no more to tell you. Do whatever you wish, and
forgive me."

* * * * *

The colonel wiped his forehead, which was covered with perspiration. His
coolness; the coolness of days when he had stood on the field of battle,
suddenly came back to him. He rang.

A man-servant made his appearance. "Send in Philippe to me," said he.
Then, he opened the drawer of his table.

The man entered almost immediately--a big soldier with red moustache, a
malignant look, and a cunning eye.

The colonel looked him straight in the face.

"You are going to tell me the name of my wife's lover."

"But, my colonel--"

The officer snatched his revolver out of the half-open drawer.

"Come! quick! You know I do not jest!"

"Well--my colonel--it is Captain Saint-Albert."

Scarcely had he pronounced this name when a flame flashed between his
eyes, and he fell on his face, his forehead pierced by a ball.

DUCHOUX

While descending the wide staircase of the club heated like a
conservatory by the stove the Baron de Mordiane had left his fur-coat
open; therefore, when the huge street-door closed behind him he felt a
shiver of intense cold run through him, one of those sudden and painful
shivers which make us feel sad, as if we were stricken with grief.
Moreover, he had lost some money, and his stomach for some time past had
troubled him, no longer permitting him to eat as he liked.

He went back to his own residence; and, all of a sudden, the thought of
his great, empty apartment, of his footman asleep in the ante-chamber, of
the dressing-room in which the water kept tepid for the evening toilet
simmered pleasantly under the chafing-dish heated by gas, and the bed,
spacious, antique, and solemn-looking, like a mortuary couch, caused
another chill, more mournful still than that of the icy atmosphere, to
penetrate to the bottom of his heart, the inmost core of his fl