chills that ran down his back at the moment when the wolf, hidden under
coverings and the grandmother's cap, said, with a gnashing of teeth, to
little Red Riding Hood: "All the better to eat you with, my child."

It was almost dark then upon the terrace. It was all delightfully
terrible!

During this time the two families, in their respective parts of the
balcony, were talking familiarly together. The Violettes were quiet
people, and preferred rather to listen to their neighbors than to talk
themselves, making brief replies for politeness' sake--"Ah!" "Is it
possible?" "You are right."

The Gerards liked to talk. Madame Gerard, who was a good housekeeper,
discussed questions of domestic economy; telling, for example, how she
had been out that day, and had seen, upon the Rue du Bac, some merino:
"A very good bargain, I assure you, Madame, and very wide!" Or perhaps
the engraver, who was a simple politician, after the fashion of 1848,
would declare that we must accept the Republic, "Oh, not the red-hot, you
know, but the true, the real one!" Or he would wish that Cavaignac had
been elected President at the September balloting; although he himself
was then engraving--one must live, after all--a portrait of Prince Louis
Napoleon, destined for the electoral platform. M. and Madame Violette
let them talk; perhaps even they did not always pay attention to the
conversation. When it was dark they held each other's hands and gazed at
the stars.

These lovely, cool, autumnal evenings, upon the balcony, under the starry
heavens, are the most distant of all Amedee's memories. Then there was a
break in his memory, like a book with several leaves torn out, after