thought the major, for he took measures, by a communication which he had
established, to send it to M. Clemenceau.

Except on holidays and Sundays, when the Parisians muster in great force
to promenade the still picturesque suburbs, the country roads are
desolate after the return home of the clerks who have slaved at the desk
in the city. One might believe oneself a hundred miles from a center of
civilization.

To the station, a little above the highway level, three paths lead. On
the road itself the village cart which had taken Madame Clemenceau's
baggage, leisurely jogged. The lady herself, instructed by her
confederate Hedwig that there was no alarm to be apprehended from the
studio, strolled along a more circuitous but pleasanter way. Her husband
and his pupil were, as usual, shut up in "the workshop." The studio had
been changed for some new fancy of the crack-brained pair; they had
packed aside the plans and models and had set up a lathe, a forge and a
miniature foundry. To the clang of hammer and the squeak of file was
added the detonation now and then of some explosive which did not emit
the sharp sound or pungent smoke of gunpowder or the more modern
substitutes' characteristic fumes.

At each shock, Césarine had trembled like the guilty. They had told her
that she was born in St. Petersburg when her mother was startled by the
blowing up of the street in front of their house by an infernal machine
intended to obliterate the Czar; in the sledge in which he was supposed
to be riding, a colonel of the _chevalier-gardes_, who resembled him,
had been injured, but the incident was kept hushed up.

One of the old servants whose age entitled his maunderings to respect