rt, and it is in vain that she puts on
bright attire, her eyes and her smile are in mourning forever.

How could she forget her Maurice when he is before her every day in
her son, who is also named Maurice and whose bright, handsome face
strikingly resembles his father's? Amedee feels a presentiment that in a
few years this child will be another Maurice, with the same attractions
and vices. The poet does not forget that his dying friend confided the
orphan to him, and he endeavors to be kind and good to him and to bring
him up well. He sometimes has a feeling of sorrow when he discovers
the same instincts and traits in the child as in the man whom he had so
dearly loved and who had made him such trouble; in spite of all, he can
not feel the sentiments of a father for another's son. His own union has
been sterile.

Poor Amedee! Yet he is envied! The little joy that he has is mingled
with grief and sorrow, and he dares not confide it to the excellent
Louise--who suspects it, however--whose old and secret attachment for
him he surmises now, and who is the good genius of his household. Had he
only realized it before! It might have been happiness, genuine happiness
for him!

The leaves fall! the leaves fall!

After breakfast, while they were smoking their cigars and walking along
beside the masses of dahlias, upon which the large golden spider had
spun its silvery web, Amedee Violette and Paul Sillery had talked
of times past and the comrades of their youth. It was not a very gay
conversation, for since then there had been the war, the Commune. How
many were dead! How many had disappeared! And, then, this retrospective
review proves to one that one can be entirely deceived as to certain
people, and that chance is master.

Such an one, whom they had once considered as a great prose writer, as
the leader of a sect, and whose doctrines of art five or six faithful
disciples spread while copying his waistcoats and even imitating his
manner of speaking with closed teeth, is reduced to writing stories for
obscene journals. "Chose," the fiery revolutionist, had obtained a good
place; and the modest "Machin," a man hardly noticed in the clubs, had
published two exquisite books, genuine works of art.

All of the "beards" and "long-haired" men had taken unexpected paths.
But the politicians, above all, were astonishing in the variety of their
destinies. Among the cafe's frequenters at the hour for absinthe one
could count eight