"Do you know, Joseph, that the little Claire has been found in the woods, murdered and outraged?" At first Joseph cannot suppress a movement of surprise,--is it really surprise? Rapid and furtive as this movement was, it seems to me that, at the sound of the little Claire's name, a sort of strange shock, something like a shudder, passed through him. He recovers very quickly. "Yes," he says, in a firm voice, "I know it. I was told so in the neighborhood this morning." Now he is indifferent and placid. He rubs his harnesses methodically with a thick, black cloth. I admire the muscular development of his bare arms, the harmonious and powerful suppleness of his biceps, the whiteness of his skin. I cannot see his eyes under the lowered lids,--his eyes so obstinately fixed upon his work. But I see his mouth, his large mouth, his enormous jaw, the jaw of a cruel and sensual beast. And I feel a sort of light tremor at my heart. I ask him further: "Do they know who did it?" Joseph shrugs his shoulders. Half jesting, half serious, he answers: "Some vagabonds, undoubtedly; some dirty sheenies." Then, after a short silence: "Puuutt! you will see that they will not pinch them. The magistrates are all sold." He hangs up the finished harnesses, and, pointing to Drumont's portrait, in its laurel halo, he adds: "If we only had him? Oh, misfortune!" I know not why I left him with a singular feeling of uneasiness in my soul. At any rate, this story is going to give us something to talk about, something to divert us a little. Sometimes, when Madame is out, and I cannot stand the ennui, I go to the iron fence by the roadside, where Mlle. Rose comes to meet me. Always on the watch, nothing that goes on in our place escapes her. She sees all who come in and go out. She is redder, fatter, flabbier than ever. Her lips hang more than they did, and she is more and more haunted by obscene ideas. Every time that we meet, her first look is at my person, and her first words, uttered in her thick voice, are: "Remember my advice. As soon as you notice anything, go straight to Mme. Gouin; straight." It is a veritable obsession, a mania. A little annoyed, I reply: "But why do you expect me to notice anything? I know nobody here." "Ah!" she exclaims, "a misfortune comes so quickly! A moment of forgetfulness,--it is very natural,--and there you are! Sometimes one does not know how it happens. I have seen some who were as sure as you are, and then it happened all the same. But with Mme. Gouin one can rest easy. So expert a woman is a real blessing to a town. Why, formerly, my dear little one, you saw nothing but children around here. The town was poisoned with children. An abomination! They swarmed in the streets, like chickens in a hen-yard. They bawled on the door-steps, and made a terrible hullaballoo. One saw nothing else. Well, I don't know whether you have noticed it, but to-day there are no more to be seen, almost none at all."