The sun had set. The solemn night was come. The children separated, each going in ignorance, according to circumstance and chance, to reap his destiny, scandalize his relatives, and gravitate toward glory or toward dishonor. A THOROUGHBRED She is quite ill-favored. None the less she is delightful! Time and Love have scarred her with their claws, and have cruelly taught her that every moment and every kiss bears away youth and freshness. She is indeed ugly; she is an ant, a spider, if you insist, a very carcass; but she is, as well, a potion, a magistral, an enchantment! in short, she is exquisite! Time could not break the sparkling harmony of her walk, nor the indestructible elegance of her stays. Love has not changed the sweetness of her childlike breath; Time has plucked nothing of her abundant mane, from which is breathed in tawny perfumes all the devilish vitality of Southern France: Nîmes, Aix, Arles, Avignon, Narbonne, Toulouse, towns blessed by the sun, amorous and charming! Time and Love have vainly nibbled with sharp teeth; they have in no way lessened the vague but eternal charm of her hoyden breast. Worn perhaps, but not wearied, and always heroic, she brings thoughts of those full-blooded horses which the eye of the true amateur will recognize, even hitched to a hackney or to a heavy truck. And then she is so sweet and so fervent! She loves as one loves in the autumn; you would say that the approach of winter lights a new fire in her heart, and the servility of her tenderness is never wearying. THE MIRROR A frightful man enters, and looks at himself in a glass. "Why do you look at yourself in the mirror, since you can view yourself only with displeasure?" The frightful man answers me: "Sir, in accordance with the immortal principles of '89, all men have equal rights; therefore I have the right to behold myself; with pleasure or displeasure, that concerns only my conscience." In the name of common sense, I was surely right; but, from a legal standpoint, he was not wrong. THE HARBOR A harbor is a charming abode for a soul weary of the struggles of life. The amplitude of the sky, the mobile architecture of the clouds, the changing colorations of the sea, the scintillating of the beacon-lights, form a prism marvellously adapted to entertain the eyes without tiring them. The slender forms of the ships, with their complicated rigging, to which the billows give harmonious oscillations, serve to maintain the taste for rhythm and for beauty. And, above all, there is a sort of mysterious and aristocratic pleasure for him who no longer has curiosity or ambition, in contemplating, couched in the turret or leaning on the pier, all the movements of those who depart and those who return, of those who still have the strength to will, the desire to travel or to acquire wealth. MISTRESSES' PORTRAITS