eyes fixed on vacancy.

As he did not come back she murmured in a tone of impatience and
annoyance:

"This good-for-nothing old man will burn four sous' worth of candle on
us."

Victor answered her from under the bed clothes.

"'Tis over an hour since he went out. We'd want to see whether he fell
asleep on the bench before the door."

She declared:

"I'm going there."

She rose up, took the light, and went out, making a shade of her hand in
order to see through the darkness.

She saw nothing in front of the door, nothing on the bench, nothing on
the dung pit, where the old man used sometimes to sit in hot weather.

But, just as she was on the point of going in again, she chanced to raise
her eyes towards the big apple tree, which sheltered the entrance to the
farm house, and suddenly she saw two feet belonging to a man who was
hanging at the height of her face.

She uttered terrible cries:

"Victor! Victor! Victor!"

He ran out in his shirt. She could not utter another word, and turning
round her head, so as not to see, she pointed towards the tree with her
outstretched arm.

Not understanding what she meant, he took the candle in order to find
out, and in the midst of the foliage lit up from below, he saw old Amable
hanged high up by the neck with a stable-halter.

A ladder was fixed at the trunk of the apple tree.

Victor rushed to look for a bill-hook, climbed up the tree, and cut the
halter. But the old man was already cold, and he put out his tongue
horribly with a frightful grimace.

MAGNETISM

It was at the close of a dinner-party of men, at the hour of endless
cigars and incessant sips of brandy, amidst the smoke and the torpid
warmth of digestion and the slight confusion of heads generated by such
a quantity of eatables and by the absorption of so many different
liquors.

Those present were talking about magnetism, about Donato's tricks, and
about Doctor Charcot's experiences. All of a sudden, those men, so
skeptical, so happy-go-lucky, so indifferent to religion of every sort,
began telling stories about strange occurrences, incredible things which
nevertheless had really happened, they contended, falling back into
superstitions, beliefs, clinging to these last remnants of the marvelous,
becoming devotees of this mystery of magnetism, defending it in the name
of science. There was only one person who smiled, a vigorous young
fellow, a great pursuer of girls in the town, and a h