us,
the Commandant de Carmelin, with sly glance and mustache curled up, came
himself to look at them and question them.

Then he bowed to them politely, excusing himself for having caused them
a bad night. But he had to carry out orders.

The people of Antibes were scared to death. Some spoke of a surprise
planned by the Italians, others of the landing of the prince imperial
and others again believed that there was an Orleanist conspiracy. The
truth was suspected only later, when it became known that the battalion
of the commandant had been sent away, to a distance and that Monsieur de
Carmelin had been severely punished.

Monsieur Martini had finished his story. Madame Parisse returned, her
promenade being ended. She passed gravely near me, with her eyes fixed
on the Alps, whose summits now gleamed rosy in the last rays of the
setting sun.

I longed to speak to her, this poor, sad woman, who would ever be
thinking of that night of love, now long past, and of the bold man who
for the sake of a kiss from her had dared to put a city into a state of
siege and to compromise his whole future.

And to-day he had probably forgotten her, if he did not relate this
audacious, comical and tender farce to his comrades over their cups.

Had she seen him again? Did she still love him? And I thought: Here
is an instance of modern love, grotesque and yet heroic. The Homer who
should sing of this new Helen and the adventure of her Menelaus must
be gifted with the soul of a Paul de Kock. And yet the hero of this
deserted woman was brave, daring, handsome, strong as Achilles and more
cunning than Ulysses.

MADEMOISELLE FIFI

Major Graf Von Farlsberg, the Prussian commandant, was reading his
newspaper as he lay back in a great easy-chair, with his booted feet
on the beautiful marble mantelpiece where his spurs had made two holes,
which had grown deeper every day during the three months that he had
been in the chateau of Uville.

A cup of coffee was smoking on a small inlaid table, which was
stained with liqueur, burned by cigars, notched by the penknife of
the victorious officer, who occasionally would stop while sharpening a
pencil, to jot down figures, or to make a drawing on it, just as it took
his fancy.

When he had read his letters and the German newspapers, which his
orderly had brought him, he got up, and after throwing three or four
enormous pieces of green wood on the fire, for these gentlemen were
gradually c