ujutte's band.

"'Your name, Christian name, and profession?'

"'Marquis Sulpice de Laurier, living on my own private income, at 24,
Rue de Galilee.'

"'De Laurier? Oh, very well.... Excuse me, monsieur, but at Madame de
Lauriere's request, I declare formally before these gentlemen, who will
be able to give evidence, that the girl Juliette Randal, whom they call
_Jujutte Tete-de-Pipe_, is your mistress. You are at liberty to go,
Monsieur le Marquis, and you, girl Randal answer my questions.'

"Thus, by the most extraordinary chance, our divorce suit created a
sensation which I had certainly never foreseen. I was obliged to appear
in the Assize Court as a witness in the celebrated case of those
burglars, when three of them were condemned to death, and to undergo the
questioning of the idiotic Presiding Judge, who tried by all means in
his power to make me acknowledge that I was Jujutte Tete-de-Pipe's
regular lover; and in consequence, ever since then I have passed as an
ardent seeker after novel sensations, and a man who wallows in the
lowest depths of the Parisian dunghill.

"I cannot say that this unjust reputation has brought me any pleasant
love affairs. Women are so perverse, so absurd, and so curious!"

THE CONFESSION

Monsieur de Champdelin had no reason to complain of his lot as a married
man; nor could he accuse destiny of having played him in a bad turn, as
it does so many others, for it would have been difficult to find a more
desirable, merrier, prettier little woman, or one who was easier to
amuse and to guide than his wife. To see the large, limpid eyes which
illuminated her fair, girlish face, one would think that her mother must
have spent whole nights before her birth, in looking dreamily at the
stars, and so had become, as it were, impregnated with their magic
brightness. And one did not know which to prefer--her bright, silky
hair, or her slightly _restrousse_ nose, with its vibrating nostrils,
her red lips, which looked as alluring as a ripe peach, her beautiful
shoulders, her delicate ears, which resembled mother-of-pearl, or her
slim waist and rounded figure, which would have delighted and tempted a
sculptor.

And then she was always merry, overflowing with youth and life, never
dissatisfied, only wishing to enjoy herself, to laugh, to love and be
loved, and putting all the house into a tumult, as if it had been a
great cage full of birds. In spite of all this, however, that worn ou