_Au Fil des Jours_ is an interesting collection of pieces in which the author has not made up his mind whether he will write short stories or articles upon social conditions. There is no harm in that; some people may even say that M. Clemenceau has produced a new variety of readable matter; but, curiously enough, the substance of the story is often so telling that one quarrels with the writer for not having put it into the best shape. Take one of the pieces in _Au Fil des Jours_--_La Roulotte_. Briefly, a weary old gipsy drives in a covered donkey-cart into a country hamlet, and stops by the riverside, where all the gossips are washing. He is received with hostile and watchful silence, because gipsies are always the scapegoats in a peasant district, and anything and everything that may be lost, stolen or strayed--even if it turns up again--is always laid to their account. In the night he dies, unnoticed; and, after some further time has passed, the villagers inspect his cart. Finding him there, dead, with a very small grandson living, they fetch the local constable and the mayor. The arm of the Law begins to function, the child is sent to the workhouse, the moribund donkey is "taken care of" by one of the villagers, and the dilapidated old cart, which only contained a few rags, is left by the riverside. But the French peasant knows how to turn every little thing to profit: nothing is useless in his eyes. Gradually handy fragments of the donkey-cart begin to disappear. Bits of the iron fittings vanish, the tilt-props go, a shaft follows, one wheel after another slips away and is no more seen. In fact, the donkey-cart, as such, disappears from mortal sight. Then, one fine day, a gipsy-woman comes swinging along the road, where she had followed the traces of the donkey-cart, and asks for news of her old father and her little boy. The authorities of the village tell her of the old gipsy's death and burial: they do not require her to pay for his obsequies only because they see it would be no use. She goes to fetch the child from the workhouse, and then asks for the donkey and cart. The former, they tell her, died in the hands of the villager who "took care of him" (and sold his skin for a fair sum). She accepts this loss with resignation; but the cart, as she says, cannot have died: where is her father's "_roulotte_"?--Ah, well, nobody in the village knows anything about _that_! It _was_ here, no doubt, since the old gipsy died in it--but since then----The Law, once more represented by mayor and constables, can only shrug its shoulders in the finest French manner and disclaim all responsibility for a vagabond's goods. But the gipsy-woman persists: she begins even to clamour for her rights. "_Rights, indeed!_" The village, hitherto indifferent, becomes hostile; and the old cry that meets the gipsy everywhere is raised, for someone on the edge of the crowd calls out, "Thief!" It is a mere expression of disapproval, not a direct