frowned angrily, and had to
restrain himself so as not to fling his victim out of a window.

The police commissary, who was calmly looking at this little scene with
the coolness of an amateur, prepared to verify the fact that they were
caught _flagrante delicto_, and in an ironical voice said to her
husband, who had claimed his services:

"I must ask for your name in full, Monsieur?"

"Charles Joseph Edward Dupontel," was the answer. And as the commissary
was writing it down from his dictation, he added suddenly: "Du Pontel in
two words, if you please, Monsieur le Commissionaire!"

THE CARTER'S WENCH

The driver, who had jumped from his box, and was now walking slowly by
the side of his thin horses, waking them up every moment by a cut of the
whip, or a coarse oath, pointed to the top of the hill, where the
windows of a solitary house, in which the inhabitants were still up,
although it was very late and quite dark, were shining like yellow
lamps, and said to me:

"One gets a good drop there, Monsieur, and well served, by George."

And his eyes flashed in his thin, sunburnt face, which was of a deep
brickdust color, while he smacked his lips like a drunkard, who
remembers a bottle of good liquor that he has lately drunk, and drawing
himself up in a blouse like a vulgar swell, he shivered like the back of
an ox, when it is sharply pricked with the goad.

"Yes, and well served by a wench who will turn your head for you before
you have tilted your elbow and drank a glass!"

The moon was rising behind the snow-covered mountain peaks, which looked
almost like blood under its rays, and which were crowned by dark, broken
clouds, which whirled about and floated, and reminded the passenger of
some terrible Medusa's head. The gloomy plains of Capsir, which were
traversed by torrents, extensive meadows in which undefined forms were
moving about, fields of rye, like huge golden table-covers, and here and
there wretched villagers, and broad sheets of water, into which the
stars seemed to look in a melancholy manner, opened out to the view.
Damp gusts of winds swept along the road, bringing a strong smell of
hay, of resin of unknown flowers, with them, and erratic pieces of rock,
which were scattered on the surface like huge boundary stones, had
spectral outlines.

The driver pulled his broad-brimmed felt hat over his eyes, twirled his
large moustache, and said in an obsequious voice:

"Does Monsieur wish to sto