It is said that a blow from a woman's hand does no harm; doubtless because, being often dealt in obedience to a hasty impulse, it is followed by repentance, and the recipient is accorded the privilege of earning another. But take a sharp, stinging blow, and nothing more. I doubt whether the fact that it was delivered by the loveliest of women and the prettiest hand would make it welcome to you. You will say, perhaps, that Madame Plays had not given young Pigeonnier a rendezvous. True; but she had accepted his escort, she had consented to go to a private dining-room with him; and those concessions, in the judgment of discerning persons, would be tantamount to giving her consent that he should take Albert's place in every respect. The little fellow reflected profoundly, as he walked from the Champs-Élysées to Rue Taitbout; he walked very fast, for one rarely moves slowly when intensely excited. "Can it be that Albert didn't write what he dictated to himself?" he thought. "I ought to have read his letter before delivering it. Can he have written some insulting thing about her? Was it a deliberate scheme to make a fool of me? _Fichtre!_ if I knew that, he'd hear something more from me! I don't propose to be made a guy of!" In his excitement, the young man brandished his beautiful gold-headed cane, as if he proposed to break somebody's head; and in his gesticulations he came within an ace of knocking off the hat of a respectable lady, its somewhat exaggerated brim happening to be directly under his cane as he imitated the exploits of a drum-major. Luckily, the ribbons tied under the lady's chin prevented the hat from falling, and it was simply thrown back on her shoulders. But the gentleman who was with the lady, and who was indignant that a passer-by should presume to knock his wife's hat off with a cane, walked up to Tobie, and said to him in a threatening tone: "I say, monsieur, what sort of a performance is this? You threaten us with your cane! You nearly put my wife's eye out, and you knocked off her hat, which would have fallen into the street if it hadn't been for the ribbons!" "Oh! monsieur, madame, a thousand pardons!" stammered Tobie; "I was so preoccupied--I didn't see you." "What! are we dwarfs?" "No, monsieur--far from it; you are very tall. But when a man is thinking about something else----" "That's a fine reason! We were thinking of something else, too, monsieur. Do you suppose we were thinking of your cane? By heaven! if you had destroyed my wife's eye, you wouldn't have taken your own home with you!" "I am sure of it, monsieur; I ask a thousand pardons." "When you carry a cane, monsieur, you ought to know how to use it." "It was because I thought that I was using it that I was gesticulating with it." During this colloquy the lady had readjusted her hat; and she drew her husband away, saying: "Come, my dear; as monsieur did it accidentally, let's accept his apologies."