Last year, in the place where I live, Saint-Bartholome, while a threshing-machine was at work, a thirteen-year-old boy shoved his arm into the gear; it was crushed up to the shoulder.

The surgeon who amputated it asked him, as he was dressing the stump, why he mutilated himself like that.

The boy confessed that it was to draw attention to himself." Meanwhile, Nanteuil, with dry eyes and pursed lips, had fixed her eyes upon the black cloth with which the catafalque was covered, and was impatiently waiting until enough holy water, candles and Latin prayers should be bestowed upon the dead man for him to depart in peace.

She had seen him again the night before, and she thought he had returned because the priests had not yet bidden him to rest in peace.

Then, reflecting that one day she, too, would die, and would, like him, be laid in a coffin, beneath a black pall, she shuddered with horror and closed her eyes.