u!_"--lightly said, deeply
felt.

I rolled on, thinking of Claude and Jeanne, the widow and Madeleine,
till I got to my destination, my queer little studio in that ramshackle
old house, Schuetzenstrause No. 5/3 links. The address is no use now, for
that abode of mine is pulled down, as are its dear decrepit brothers and
sisters, and the primitive old station opposite. All to make room for
new buildings more suitable to tenants with sensitive noses and
rectilinear tastes.

The first letter that reached me from Paris was not, as I expected, in
Claude's handwriting, but in his father's. It told me that Claude was
too ill to write. He was to have gone down to his uncle's on the
Saturday (I had left on the Tuesday), and he was looking forward to what
only a short time previously he had called a trap, a guet-apens, with
the greatest impatience, for amongst other guests would be Olga
Rabachot. But before the day came he caught a severe chill, and was
peremptorily ordered to bed.

The fascinating widow he was never to see again. Not only the old cough
had returned, but with it symptoms sufficiently grave to make it
desirable he should winter abroad.

I had foreseen, and so has doubtless any one who has cared so far to
follow Dupont on the love-path, that it was not he who would marry, the
fascinating widow, but the uncle, and so I may as well state that such
was the case. How it came about I either never knew or have forgotten,
and as I should only be getting out of my depth if I attempted to fill
the gap with scraps of fiction, I will confine myself to the simple
narrative based on my recollections, and will merely add that I trust
the uncle and the aunt lived happily ever after, and that the workmen at
the dyer's works got as much ventilation as was procurable at that time
and in that particular part of the world.

Claude soon left for Mentone. Then came my turn; was it sympathy or was
it coincidence? About the same time I too was taken ill, and that
seriously. The cause was not far to seek: a component part in the great
scheme of creation is a certain vicious north-east wind that seems to
live and thrive on annihilation. This Boreas is a kind of ogre who feeds
not only on fat babies, but on any mortal thing that he can turn into
dust. Not satisfied with his legitimate prey, the autumn leaves, he
explores every nook and corner seeking whom he may devour. He found me
out one evening after a day of unusual heat, as soon a