, her maid, came and told them that her
mistress insisted upon it, that they could make up their minds to do so,
and they were surprised to find Sonia in bed by herself.

"Well!" Ernest asked boldly, "and what about the Marquis?" "He left very
early," Sonia replied. "A queer sort of marquis, I must say!" Ernest
observed contemptuously, and growing bolder. "Why, I should like to
know?" Sonia replied, drawing herself up. "The man has his own habits, I
suppose!" "Do you know, Madame," Sabina observed, "that he came back
half an hour after he left?" "Ah!" Sonia said, getting up and walking
about the room. "He came back? What did he want, I wonder?" "He did not
say, Madame. He merely went upstairs to see you. He was dressed in his
old clothes again."

And suddenly Sonia uttered a loud cry, and clapped her hands, and the
seven came round to see what had caused her emotion. "Look here! Just
look here!" she cried. "Do look on the mantel-piece! It is really
charming! Do look!"

And with a smiling, and yet somewhat melancholy expression in her eyes,
with a tender look which they could not understand, she showed them a
small bunch of wild flowers, by the side of a heap of half-pennies.
Mechanically she took them up and counted them, and then began to cry.

There were forty-seven of them.

THE BED

On a hot afternoon during last summer, the large auction rooms seemed
asleep, and the auctioneers were knocking down the various lots in a
listless manner. In a back room, on the first floor, two or three lots
of old silk, ecclesiastical vestments, were lying in a corner.

They were copes for solemn occasions, and graceful chasubles on which
embroidered flowers surrounded symbolic letters on a yellowish ground,
which had become cream-colored, although it had originally been white.
Some second-hand dealers were there, two or three men with dirty beards,
and a fat woman with a big stomach, one of those women who deal in
second-hand finery, and who also manage illicit love affairs, who are
brokers in old and young human flesh, just as much as they are in new
and old clothes.

Presently a beautiful Louis XV. chasuble was put up for sale, which was
as pretty as the dress of a marchioness of that period; it had retained
all its colors, and was embroidered with lilies of the valley round the
cross, and long blue iris, which came up to the foot of the sacred
emblem, and wreaths of roses in the corners. When I had bought it, I
n