it except a good bed and a dressing table.  Then she invented an old aunt for the occasion, who was ill and always grumbling, and who suffered from heart disease and lived in one of the suburbs, and so several times a week Josine took refuge in her sleeping place, and used to sleep late there as if it had been some delicious abode where one forgets the whole world.  Sometimes they forgot to call her at the proper time; she got back late, tired, with red and swollen eyelids, involved herself in lies, contradicted herself and looked so much as if she had just come from the confessional, feeling horribly ashamed of herself, or, as if she had hurried home from some assignation, that at last Servance worried himself about it, thought that he was being made a fool of like so many of his comrades were, got into a rage and made up his mind to set the matter straight, and so discover who this aunt of his mistress’s was, who had so suddenly fallen from the skies.

“He necessarily applied to an obliging agency, where they excited his jealousy, exasperated him day after day by making him believe that Josine Cadenette was making an absolute fool of him, had no more a sick aunt than she had any virtue, but that during the day she continued the little debaucheries which she committed with him at night, and that she shamelessly frequented some discreet bachelor’s lodgings, where more than probably one of his own best friends was amusing himself at his expense, and having his share of the cake.  He was fool enough to believe these fellows, instead of going and watching Josine himself, putting his nose into the business and going and knocking at the door of her room.  He wanted to hear no more, and would not listen to her.  For a trifle, in spite of her tears, he would have turned the poor thing into the streets, as if she had been a bundle of dirty linen.  You may guess how she flew out at him and told him all sorts of things to annoy him; she let him believe he was not mistaken, that she had had enough of his affection, and that she was madly in love with another man.  He grew very pale when she said that, looked at her furiously, clenched his teeth and said in a hoarse voice: 

“‘Tell me his name, tell me his name!’

“‘Oh!’ she said, chaffingly, ‘you know him very well!’ and if I had not happened to have gone in I think there would have been a tragedy....  How stupid they are, and they were so happy and loved each other so....  And now Josine is living with fat Schweinsshon, a low scoundrel who will live upon her and Servance has taken up with Sophie Labisque, who might easily be his mother; you know her, that bundle of red and yellow, who has been at that kind of thing for eighteen years, and whom Laglandee has christened, ‘Saecula saeculorum!’”

“By Jove!  I should rather think I did!”

A USEFUL HOUSE

Royamount’s fat sides shook with laughter at the mere recollection of the funny story that he had promised to his friends, and throwing himself back in the great arm-chair, which he completely filled, that picker up of bits of pinchbeck, as they called him at the club, at last said: