before one,
the handmaids of the patriarchs, who are mentioned in the Bible, Hagar,
Ruth, the daughters of Lot, Abigail, Abishag, the virgin of Shunam, who
reanimated David with her caresses when he was dying, and the others,
young, stout, white, patricians or plebeians, irresponsible females
belonging to a master, and submissive slaves, whether caught by the
attraction of royalty, or bought as slaves!

"What did you do?" I asked.

"I went away," he replied simply. And we remained sitting side by side
for a long time without speaking, only dreaming! ...

I have retained an impression of that evening that I can never forget.
All that I saw, felt, and heard, our fishing excursion, the octopus
also, perhaps that harrowing story, amidst those white figures on the
neighboring roofs, all seemed to concur in producing a unique sensation.
Certain meetings, certain inexplicable combinations of things, decidedly
contain a larger quantity of the secret quintessence of life, than that
which is spread over the ordinary events of our days, without anything
exceptional happening to them.

THE HERMAPHRODITE

"Upon my word, I laughed at it as much as the rest," Navarette
exclaimed; "I laughed at it with that profound, cruel pitilessness which
we all of us, who are well made and vigorous, feel for those whom their
step-mother, Nature, has disfigured in some way or other, for those
laughable, feeble creatures who are, however, more to be pitied than
those poor deformed wretches from whom we turn away in spite of
ourselves.

"I had been the first to make fun of him at the club, to find those easy
words which are remembered, and to turn that smooth, flabby, pink, ugly
face, like that of an old woman, and of a Levantine eunuch in which the
mouth is like a piece of inert flesh, and where the small eyes glisten
with concentrated cunning, and remind us of the watchful, angry eyes of
a gorilla, at the same time, into ridicule. I knew that he was selfish,
without any affection, unreliable, full of whims, turning like a
weathercock with every wind that blows, and caring for nothing in the
world except gambling and old Dresden china.

"However, our intercourse was invariably limited to a careless, 'Good
morning,' and to the usual shake of the hands which men exchange when
they meet at the theater or the club, and so I had neither to defend
him, nor to uphold him as a friend. But I can swear to you that now I
reproach myself for all