A little uneasy I seated myself on the low couch covered with crepe de Chine and stretched myself full length, and was at once bathed in a delicious odor of mignonette. I opened my mouth in order to breathe it in, for my mind had already become stupefied and forgetful of the past and was a prey, in the first stages of asphyxia, to the enchanting intoxication of a destroying and magic opium. Some one shook me by the arm. “Oh, oh, monsieur,” said the secretary, laughing, “it looks to me as if you were almost caught.” But a voice, a real voice, and no longer a dream voice, greeted me with the peasant intonation: “Good morning, m'sieu. How goes it?” My dream was over. I saw the Seine distinctly in the sunlight, and, coming along a path, the garde champetre of the district, who with his right hand touched his kepi braided in silver. I replied: “Good morning, Marinel. Where are you going?” “I am going to look at a drowned man whom they fished up near the Morillons. Another who has thrown himself into the soup. He even took off his trousers in order to tie his legs together with them.” End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Original Short Stories of Maupassant, Volume 13, by Guy de Maupassant