“A most delicious omelette was served. I was seated between Madame Le Mansel, who was moaning under her crown, and her mother, an old Normandy woman with round cheeks, who, having lost all her teeth, smiled with her eyes. She seemed very attractive to me. While we were eating roast-duck and chicken _à la crème_ the good lady told us some very amusing stories, and, in spite of what her grandson had said, I did not observe that her mind was in the slightest degree affected. On the contrary, she seemed to be the life of the house. “After dinner we adjourned to a little sitting-room whose walnut furniture was covered with yellow Utrecht velvet. An ornamental clock between two candelabra decorated the mantelpiece, and on the top of its black plinth, and protected and covered by a glass globe, was a red egg. I do not know why, once having observed it, I should have examined it so attentively. Children have such unaccountable curiosity. However, I must say that the egg was of a most wonderful and magnificent colour. It had no resemblance whatever to those Easter eggs dyed in the juice of the beetroot, so much admired by the urchins who stare in at the fruit-shops. It was of the colour of royal purple. And with the indiscretion of my age I could not resist saying as much. “M. Le Mansel’s reply was a kind of crow which expressed his admiration. “‘That egg, young sir,’ he added, ‘has not been dyed as you seem to think. It was laid by a Cingalese hen in my poultry-yard just as you see it there. It is a phenomenal egg.’ “‘You must not forget to say,’ Madame Le Mansel added in a plaintive voice, ‘that this egg was laid the very day our Alexandre was born.’ “‘That’s a fact,’ M. Le Mansel assented. “In the meantime the old grandmother looked at me with sarcastic eyes, and pressed her loose lips together and made a sign that I was not to believe what I heard. “‘Humph!’ she whispered, ‘chickens often sit on what they don’t lay, and if some malicious neighbour slips into their nest a----’ “Her grandson interrupted her fiercely. He was pale, and his hands shook. “‘Don’t listen to her,’ he cried to me. ‘You know what I told you. Don’t listen!’ “‘It’s a fact!’ M. Le Mansel repeated, his round eye fixed in a side glance at the red egg.