the pail on the floor, and the chair against the wall. Then, with
professional movements, she closed the dead woman's large eyes, put a
plate on the bed and poured some holy water into it, placing in it the
twig of boxwood that had been nailed to the chest of drawers, and
kneeling down, she fervently repeated the prayers for the dead, which she
knew by heart, as a matter of business.

And when Honore returned in the evening he found her praying, and he
calculated immediately that she had made twenty sows out of him, for she
had only spent three days and one night there, which made five francs
altogether, instead of the six which he owed her.




THE SNIPE

Old Baron des Ravots had for forty years been the champion sportsman of
his province. But a stroke of paralysis had kept him in his chair for the
last five or six years. He could now only shoot pigeons from the window
of his drawing-room or from the top of his high doorsteps.

He spent his time in reading.

He was a good-natured business man, who had much of the literary spirit
of a former century. He worshipped anecdotes, those little risque
anecdotes, and also true stories of events that happened in his
neighborhood. As soon as a friend came to see him he asked:

"Well, anything new?"