her all the way to the Russian capital by hand. In my heart I was
looking to her to found another family--she had so frequently become a
mother in the past. But month succeeded month, and she for ever
disappointed me, and at last I abandoned hope. In solitude and exile
Mercedes degenerated sadly; got monstrously fat; too indolent to gnaw,
let her teeth grow to a preposterous length; and in the end died of a
surfeit of _smetana_.

When I returned to Paris, at the age of twenty, to _faire mon droit_
in the Latin Quarter, I paid a visit to our old house, and discovered
the same old concierge in the _loge_. I asked her about the mice, and
she told me her children had found the care of them such a bother that
at first they had neglected them, and at last allowed them to escape.
'They took to the walls, and for a long time afterwards, Monsieur,
the mice of this neighbourhood were pied. To this day they are of a
paler hue than elsewhere.'




A BROKEN LOOKING-GLASS


He climbed the three flights of stone stairs, and put his key into the
lock; but before he turned it, he stopped--to rest, to take breath. On
the door his name was painted in big white letters, Mr. Richard Dane.
It is always silent in the Temple at midnight; to-night the silence
was dense, like a fog. It was Sunday night; and on Sunday night, even
within the hushed precincts of the Temple, one is conscious of a
deeper hush.