ad taken from a little leather bag placed on the table her blessed
rosary and was repeating her prayers, while her sister was reading a
volume of Voltaire's correspondence which she held at a distance from her
eyes, her lips moving as she perused it.

For my own part, I was striding up and down the room, gnawing my
moustache, a bad habit I have never been able to get rid of, and halting
from time to time in front of Dr. C., an old friend of mine, who was
quietly reading the paper in the most comfortable of the armchairs. I
dared not disturb him, so absorbed did he seem in what he was reading,
but in my heart I was furious to see him so quiet when I myself was so
agitated.

Suddenly he tossed the paper on to the couch and, passing his hand across
his bald and shining head, said:

"Ah! if I were a minister, it would not take long, no, it would not be
very long . . . . You have read that article on Algerian cotton. One of
two things, either irrigation . . . . But you are not listening to me,
and yet it is a more serious matter than you think."

He rose, and with his hands in his pocket, walked across the room humming
an old medical student's song. I followed him closely.

"Jacques," said I, as he turned round, "tell me frankly, are you
satisfied?"

"Yes, yes, I am satisfied . . . observe my untroubled look," and he broke
into his hearty and somewhat noisy laugh.

"You are not hiding anything from me, my dear fellow?"

"What a donkey you are, old fellow. I tell you that everything is going
on well."

And he resumed his song, jingling the money in his pockets.

"All is going on well, but it will take some time," he went on. "Let me
have one of your dressing-gowns. I shall be more comfortable for the
night, and these ladies will excuse me, will they not?"

"Excuse you, I should think so, you, the doctor, and my friend!" I felt
devotedly attached to him that evening.

"Well, then, if they will excuse me, you can very well let me have a pair
of slippers."

At this moment a cry came from the next room and we distinctly heard
these words in a stifled voice:

"Doctor . . . oh! mon Dieu! . . . doctor!"

"It is frightful," murmured my aunts.

"My dear friend," I exclaimed, seizing the doctor's arm, "you are quite
sure you are not concealing anything from me?"

"If you have a very loose pair they will suit me best; I have not the
foot of a young girl . . . . I am not concealing anything, I am not
concealing anyt